U.S. airstrikes hit Islamic State staging area in Syria

WASHINGTON — A Pentagon spokesman says the United States executed two airstrikes Wednesday on an Islamic State group staging area in eastern Syria.

Rear Adm. John Kirby says the target of the strikes was an area used by the militants to move equipment across the border into Iraq.

Earlier Wednesday, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported airstrikes in and around the eastern Syrian city of Boukamal.

Kirby told CNN that the U.S. also struck Islamic State targets in Iraq, near the Kurdish city of Irbil and the capital, Baghdad.

Judy Woodruff gets analysis on Tuesday’s broadcast of how the airstrikes will complicate an already complicated war in Syria from Andrew Tabler of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Joshua Landis of the University of Oklahoma and retired Col. Derek Harvey of the University of South Florida.