The coalition had conducted 21 attacks on the militants near the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani over Monday and Tuesday and appeared to have slowed Islamic State advances there, the U.S. military said, but cautioned the situation remained fluid.
U.S. President Barack Obama voiced deep concern on Tuesday about the situation in Kobani as well as in Iraq's Anbar province, which U.S. troops fought to secure during the Iraq war and is now at risk of being seized by Islamic State militants.
"Coalition air strikes will continue in both of these areas," Obama told military leaders from coalition partners including Turkey, Arab states and Western allies during a meeting outside Washington.
The fight against Islamic State will be among the items on the agenda when Obama holds a video conference on Wednesday with British, French, German and Italian leaders, the White House said.
The plight of the Syrian Kurds in Kobani provoked riots among Turkey's 15 million Kurds last week in which at least 35 people were killed.
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Turkish warplanes were reported to have attacked Kurdish rebel targets in southeast Turkey after the army said it had been attacked by the banned PKK Kurdish militant group, risking reigniting a three-decade conflict that killed 40,000 people before a ceasefire was declared two years ago.
Kurds inside Kobani said the U.S.-led strikes on Islamic State had helped, but that the militants, who have besieged the town for weeks, were still on the attack.
"Today there were air strikes throughout the day, which is a first. And sometimes we saw one plane carrying out two strikes, dropping two bombs at a time," said Abdulrahman Gok, a journalist with a local Kurdish paper who is inside the town.
"The strikes are still continuing," he said by telephone, as an explosion sounded in the background.
"In the afternoon, Islamic State intensified its shelling of the town," he said. "The fact that they're not conducting face-to-face, close-distance fight but instead shelling the town from afar is evidence that they have been pushed back a bit."
who ordered the bombing campaign that started in August against Islamic State fighters, told the meeting of military leaders from 22 countries to expect a "long-term effort" in the battle against Islamic State militants.
"There will be days of progress and there are going to be some periods" of setbacks, he said.
A U.S. military official told Reuters after the talks there was an acknowledgement that Islamic State was making some gains on the ground, despite the air strikes. But there was also a sense that the coalition, working together, would ultimately prevail, the official said.
"In the short term, there are some gains that they have been able to make. In the long term, that momentum will be reversed," the official said, adding the coalition would adjust its tactics as Islamic State fighters increasingly blend into the population and become harder to target.
Washington has faced the difficult task of building a coalition to intervene in Syria and Iraq, two countries with complex multi-sided civil wars in which most of the nations of the Middle East have enemies and clients on the ground.
In particular, U.S. officials have expressed frustration at Turkey's refusal to help them fight against Islamic State. Washington has said Turkey has agreed to let it strike from Turkish air base. Ankara has said that is still under discussion.
