The US military says American and coalition warplanes have struck a crude oil pipeline and collection depots in Syria held by the ISIL terrorist group.

According to a statement issued by the US military, the coalition jets conducted 14 airstrikes near the eastern city of Deir ez-Zor since Sunday morning, including six raids on five crude oil collection points, a pipeline, armored vehicles and a shipping container.

Since late September, the US and some of its Arab allies have been carrying out airstrikes against ISIL inside Syria without any authorization from Damascus or a UN mandate.

US warplanes have been conducting airstrikes against ISIL in Iraq since early August. Some Western states have also participated in some of the strikes in Iraq.

The US-led coalition has done little to stop the ISIL’s advances in parts of Syria and in western Iraq.

Some analysts have criticized the aerial military campaign in Syria, saying the strikes are meant to destroy the Arab country’s infrastructure.

Alan Sabrosky, a US Marine Corps veteran, has said that the United States’ airstrikes in Syria often target militants with “no military value” and actually aim at the country’s infrastructure.

Sabrosky, a US Army War College graduate, said Washington intends to inflict “such damage to the economic and industrial infrastructure within Syria that any Syrian government after the fighting will be so weakened that it will be vulnerable to further attacks.”

The ISIL terrorists, who were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, control large parts of Syria’s northern territory. ISIL sent its fighters into Iraq in June, quickly seizing several parts of Iraq.

GJH/GJH