BEIRUT — US-led coalition warplanes carried out as many as 30 airstrikes overnight against Islamic State militants in and around the group’s de facto capital in northeastern Syria, activists said Sunday.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strikes targeted Islamic State positions in the city of Raqqa as well as the Division 17 air base, which the militants seized this year from government forces.
The monitoring group, which relies on a network of activists inside Syria, reported at least 30 coalition strikes in all. The Local Coordination Committees, an activist collective, also confirmed the airstrikes. Neither group had casualty figures.
There was no immediate confirmation from the US military.
The coalition began targeting Islamic State militants in Syria in September, expanding an aerial campaign already hitting the extremist group in Iraq.
Many of the US airstrikes in Syria have targeted fighters who are attacking the predominantly Kurdish town of Kobani on the Turkish border.
The Observatory said that at least 50 Islamic State militants were killed on Saturday and early Sunday in clashes with Kurds and in coalition airstrikes. Eleven Kurdish fighters were also killed, according to the Observatory.
Idris Nassan, a Kurdish official from Kobani, said by telephone that tens of Islamic militants were killed, but he did not have a concrete figure.
The Islamic State has been attacking Kobani since mid-September. The militants’ offensive has bogged down, and the Syrian Kurds — backed by their Iraqi brethren with heavy weapons — appear to have seized the momentum and to have begun pushing the jihadis back.
In Egypt on Sunday, a court designated the Islamic State a terrorist organization and banned it in the country.
The ruling also declared all of the Islamic State’s affiliates to be terrorist organizations as well.
Ansar Beit al-Maqdis or Champions of Jerusalem, a jihadi group based in the Sinai Peninsula that regularly attacks Egyptian security forces, pledged allegiance to the Islamic State last month.
Other countries across the region also have banned the group.
At a meeting in Istanbul on Sunday, Pope Francis and the spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians demanded an end to the persecution of religious minorities in Syria and Iraq and called for a ‘‘constructive dialogue’’ with Muslims.
Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I issued a joint declaration that capped the pontiff’s three-day visit to Turkey with a strong show of Christian unity.
The declaration urged leaders in the region to intensify assistance to victims of the Islamic State and to allow Christians who have had a presence in the region for 2,000 years to remain on their native lands.
‘‘The terrible situation of Christians and all those who are suffering in the Middle East calls not only for our constant prayer but also for an appropriate response on the part of the international community,’’ they wrote.
Specifically, Francis told reporters on the way home from Istanbul, all Islamic leaders — political, religious, academic — should clearly condemn terrorism so that their people hear it directly from their mouths.
‘‘We need a global condemnation — including from Muslims — who say, ‘This isn’t who we are. This isn’t the Koran,’ ’’ he said.
Francis, who leads the 1.2 billion-strong Catholic Church, and Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of the world’s 300 million Orthodox Christians, called for ‘‘constructive dialogue’’ with Islam ‘‘based on mutual respect and friendship.’’
‘‘Inspired by common values and strengthened by genuine fraternal sentiments, Muslims and Christians are called to work together for the sake of justice, peace, and respect for the dignity and rights of every person, especially in those regions where they once lived for centuries in peaceful coexistence and now tragically suffer together the horrors of war,’’ they said.
Francis began his final day in Turkey with a lengthy, two-hour liturgy alongside Barthlomew in the Orthodox Church of St. George, where incense mingled with hypnotic chants and prayers on an important feast day for the Orthodox Church.