US “COALITION” jets bombed Syrian infrastructure over the weekend as Turkish ministers claimed Pentagon support for their invasion.

Syria’s Sana news agency quoted local and media sources saying that coalition air strikes hit the al-Meghle bridge across the Euphrates river near Maadan village, four miles east of the Isis stronghold of Raqqa.

A Combined Joint Task Force press statement on Saturday did not mention the Maadan attack.

But it said the Operation Inherent Resolve mission — the coalition’s mission to destroy Isis in Iraq and Syria — had bombed five oil wells near the Isis-besieged eastern city of Deir Ezzor on Friday and one in Abu Kamal, further down the Euphrates near the Iraq border.

Sana pointed out that the 60-nation coalition was operating in Syria illegally without the government’s permission or a UN security council mandate.

The bombing raids were apparently in support of the offensive by the Pentagonbacked Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), dominated by Kurdish militia, which is closing in on Raqqa from the west and north-east.

Yesterday the pro-Kurd Hawar News Agency reported that the SDF had liberated two more villages, bringing it within three miles of the northern outskirts of Raqqa.

But Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim warned the Kurdish People’s Protection Units — which, like their Turkish ally the PKK, Turkey has branded a terrorist organisation — against taking Raqqa, and claimed Washington backed Ankara’s position.

“We have said that a terror organisation cannot be used against another terror organisation,” Mr Yildirim said at the international Munich Security Conference in Germany on Saturday.

“That doesn’t work in friendship. I think the new US administration will take this evaluation into consideration.”

Mr Yildirim looked forward to US backing for a Turkish offensive to Raqqa along the south bank of the Euphrates, led by its allies among the multitude of Free Syrian Army factions currently struggling to capture the town of alBab, north-east of Aleppo.

Turkish Defence Minister Fikri Isik said US Defence Secretary James Mattis and Chief of Staff General Joe Dunford backed that plan in meetings last week.

He said that Mr Mattis had pledged more support against the insurgency in Turkey and promised that the People’s Protection Units would be prevented from uniting their two zones of control in north-east and north-west Syria.