France's first Syria airstrike 'killed 30 IS fighters'

France's first airstrike on Islamic State group targets in Syria has killed at least 30 extremists, including 12 child soldiers, a monitoring group said on Wednesday.

"The French airstrike [on Sunday] on an IS training camp in eastern Syria killed at least 30 IS fighters including 12 from the 'Cubs of the Caliphate,'" said Rami Abd al-Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

IS calls its child soldiers "Cubs of the Caliphate".

Abd al-Rahman said foreign IS fighters were also among the dead, and that the strike had wounded around 20 people.

The raid took place in Syria's eastern province of Deir Az-Zour, near the al-Bu Kamal border crossing used by IS to link the Syrian and Iraqi parts of its so-called "caliphate".

	Hollande announced the attack on Sunday [Getty]

President Francois Hollande said on Sunday that six French warplanes hit an IS training camp near Deir Az-Zour City, and that more strikes could follow in the coming weeks.

"We struck militarily an extremely sensitive site for IS," said French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, describing it as a "strategic hub" for militants travelling between Iraq and Syria.

It was France's first airstrike in Syria as part of the US-led coalition fighting the extremist group there and in Iraq.

France was already bombing IS targets in Iraq and had carried out 215 of the nearly 4,500 airstrikes there.