The United Arab Emirates said on Monday it is ready to commit ground troops against extremists in Syria and described Russian air strikes in the country as attacks on a "common enemy".

The United Arab Emirates said on Monday it is ready to commit ground troops against extremists in Syria and described Russian air strikes in the country as attacks on a "common enemy".

Quoted by the official WAM news agency, Emirati State Minister for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash said the UAE would "participate in any international effort demanding a ground intervention to fight terrorism".

"Regional countries must bear part of the burden" of such an intervention, he said during a Sunday discussion on Syria.

The UAE is a member of the U.S.-led coalition carrying out air strikes against the so-called 'Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant' (ISIL) takfiri group in territory under its control in Syria and Iraq.

As the extremists held out against more than a year of strikes and launched operations abroad including the November 13 attacks in Paris, there have been growing calls for the anti-ISIL intervention to expand to a ground force.

Russia launched its own strikes in Syria in late September.

In the UAE's first official reaction to the Russian strikes, Gargash said "we agree that nobody will be upset by the Russian bombardment of ISIL or Al-Qaeda as it targets a common enemy."

UAE is a part of the Saudi-led coalition on Yemen that has been striking the country for 250 days now to restore power to fugitive President Abed Rabbu Mansour Hadi. The Saudi-US aggression has so far killed at least 6,579 Yemenis, including hundreds of women and children.

Despite Riyadh’s claims that it is bombing the positions of the Yemeni national military, Saudi warplanes are flattening residential areas and civilian infrastructures.