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The United States was said to be considering air strikes aimed at eliminating individual leaders of Islamic State as Turkey came under mounting pressure to stem the flow of jihadists across its border into Syria. As Washington debated extending air strikes into Syria on Saturday, senior British politicians urged Ankara to act to block recruits from the UK and other countries from entering Syria via Turkey, en route to joining Islamic State (formerly Isis). This weekend large numbers of Isis jihadists were trying to secure greater control of the border area, pushing northwards in armoured trucks looted from abandoned Iraqi...

Dubai: The Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (Isil), which controls a huge swathe of territory between Syria and Iraq, is selling crude from captured oilfields on the black market at less than half the global international prices, experts in the Middle East said. The oil being sold by Isil ranges between $25 (Dh91.75) per barrel to $60 per barrel compared to the current market prices, which on Friday traded for about $102 for Brent crude. Brent is a benchmark for European, African and Middle Eastern oil. However, the illegal sale of oil by Isil will not have any impact...

WASHINGTON — He had just hung up the telephone with the devastated parents before heading in front of the cameras. Unusually emotional, President Obama declared himself “heartbroken” by the brutal murder of an American journalist, James Foley, and vowed to “be relentless” against Islamic radicals threatening to kill another American. But as soon as the cameras went off, Mr. Obama headed to his favorite golf course on Martha’s Vineyard, where he is on vacation, seemingly able to put the savagery out of his mind. He spent the rest of the afternoon on the links even as a firestorm of criticism...

Baghdad, Iraq (CNN) -- As violence CONTINUES to wrack Iraq, the United Nations warned Saturday of another ethnic slaughter in the making by Sunni extremists from ISIS. ISIS fighters have besieged the ethnic Turkmen Shiite town of Amerli in the north for two months, and its fewer than 20,000 residents are without power and running out of food, water and medical supplies. "The situation of the PEOPLE in Amerli is desperate and demands immediate action to prevent the possible massacre of its citizens," said Nickolay Mladenov, the U.N. secretary-general's special representative for Iraq. He said the suffering was "unspeakable" and...

Western intelligence agencies have been assisting the Syrian government of Bashar al Assad fight militants of Isis (now called the 'Islamic State'), by providing details on the location of militant leaders for targeted air strikes. The information was passed to Assad's government by German intelligence service Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), which acted as an intermediary, a source told the Independent... In recent weeks, Syrian forces have launched a series of airstrikes against Islamic State commanders and headquarters, as they battle to halt the advance of jihadist forces from their stronghold in the east of the country. The Assad regime has been accused...

There are fears of a "possible massacre" in Iraq amid a UN warning about the situation in a town besieged by militants. The UN's Special Envoy to the country said immediate action was needed to protect the people of Amerli, which has been overwhelmed by Islamic State (IS) fighters. Nickolay Mladenov said reports "confirm that people are surviving in desperate conditions" and there is "unspeakable suffering". Shia Turkmen residents of the town, in the Salaheddin province north of Baghdad, has been cut off from government-held territory for months. Iraq's prime minister designate Haidar al Abadi has promised aid for them....

Iraqi Islamic State terrorists released a video online Tuesday night, Aug. 19, purportedly showing the beheading of American photo-journalist James Wright Foley, 40, abducted in Syria 22 months ago, after threatening to punish the US and Britain for air strikes in Iraq. Also visible was another kidnapped US journalist, Stevent Sotloff, who had been missing from northern Syria since July 2013. Under the caption “A Message to America,” it was indicated that Sotlof was being held hostage to the next United States actions in Iraq. It is not clear where the videotaped atrocity had been filmed whether in Syria or...

US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel has used a remarkable set of words to describe the militants of Islamic State (IS). He warned of their "apocalyptic, end-of-days strategic vision", argued that they pose "an imminent threat to every interest we have, whether it's in Iraq or anywhere else", and depicted them as "beyond anything that we've seen". Is this reckless threat inflation, or is Mr Hagel correct?

General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon briefing Thursday that “because of open borders and immigration issues,” the Islamic State of Iraq is an “immediate threat.” During the briefing, held by Dempsey and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, a reporter asked: “Is it the calculation that ISIL presents a 9/11 level threat to the United States?” Hagel responded first: “ISIL is as sophisticated and well-funded as any group that we have seen. They’re beyond just a terrorist group. They marry ideology, a sophistication of strategic and tactical military prowess. They are tremendously well-funded.” [T]his...

White House: That round of golf after the Foley video was released doesn’t show the depth of Obama’s grief Oh, I don’t know. He seems pretty grief-stricken here, no? [see embedded Tweet at link] Ask yourself this, though. Is “optics” really just a Beltway parlor game? My hunch about most low-information voters, a.k.a. most voters, is that they’d struggle to name who the vice president is when asked. We’re lucky if they’re cognizant of what happened to James Foley at all, let alone Obama’s reaction to it.

Obama May Seek New Funds To Battle Islamic State: Senate Aide By Richard Cowan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama could ask the U.S. Congress in coming weeks to approve new funds for airstrikes against Islamic State targets, according to a congressional aide, following the militants' beheading of an American journalist and activities in Iraq. A Senate Democratic aide on Friday said the Obama administration could detail by early to mid-September the amount of additional money it wants for the military operations, although the aide did not estimate the size of the possible funding request. The administration has indicated it...

Supporters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) have launched a viral propaganda campaign on Twitter threatening to attack the United States and its interests if America acts militarily against the group in Iraq.

Two days before Mosul fell to the Islamic insurgent group Isis (the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant), Iraqi commanders stood eyeballing its most trusted messenger. The man, known within the extremist group as Abu Hajjar, had finally cracked after a fortnight of interrogation and given up the head of Isis's military council. "He said to us, 'you don't realise what you have done'," an intelligence official recalled. "Then he said: 'Mosul will be an inferno this week'.' Several hours later, the man he had served as a courier and been attempting to protect, Abdulrahman al-Bilawi, lay dead in...

Federal authorities today urged law enforcement across the country to be alert for possible attacks inside the United States in retaliation for U.S. airstrikes against the Islamic group ISIS. In a joint bulletin issued to local, state and federal law enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security and FBI said that while they are “unaware of any specific, credible threats against the Homeland” and find direct threats from ISIS “not credible,” they cannot rule out attacks in the United States from sympathizers radicalized by the group’s online propaganda. “[B]ecause of the individualized nature of the radicalization process – it is difficult...

“They are beyond just a terrorist group,” Hagel said. “They marry ideology, a sophistication of ... military prowess. They are tremendously well-funded. This is beyond anything we’ve seen.” But Jim Walsh with the MIT Security Studies Program said ISIS has also suffered a series of setbacks at the hands of Kurdish and U.S. forces and said the Islamic militants are more concerned with the immediate threats in their region than attacking the U.S. “The theory is that they have a safe haven and if you have a safe haven you can carry out an attack. That’s true. Unfortunately there’s no...

... The question for President Barack Obama and other Western leaders isn't whether to fight the Islamic State, but when. Should it be now, when the group is not yet entrenched in Iraq, and when Assad finally has begun to move against it in Syria? Or will it be once its fighters have established themselves in Iraq and Syria and move on to Jordan, as they moved on the Kurds? If they were to succeed in Jordan, why not the Gulf states, where they already recruit and solicit donations? In Iraq and beyond, the nightmare prospect is of an al-Qaida...

The Defense Department on Friday pushed back against Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s (R) claim that fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) might have entered the United States across its southern border. Perry, who is weighing another run for the president in 2016, made the assertion Thursday during a speech at the conservative Heritage Foundation. "There's the obvious great concern that, because of the condition of the border from the standpoint of it not being secure, and us not knowing who is penetrating across, that individuals from ISIS or other terrorist states could be [crossing]," he said....

German Development Minister Gerd Mueller accused Qatar on Wednesday of financing Islamic State militants who have seized wide areas of northern Iraq and have posted a video of a captive American journalist being beheaded. “This kind of conflict, this kind of a crisis always has a history … The ISIS troops, the weapons – these are lost sons, with some of them from Iraq,” Mueller told German public broadcaster ZDF. “You have to ask who is arming, who is financing ISIS troops. The keyword there is Qatar – and how do we deal with these people and states politically?” said...

A former CIA officer said Thursday he has no doubt Islamic State (ISIS) sleeper cells are already planted on U.S. soil. ... former CIA officer Bob Baer told the network ISIS is already on this side of the Atlantic. "I have been told with no uncertainty there are ISIS sleeper cells in this country," he said. ... Islamic State fighters suggest their leader, Iraqi Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is planning something for the West – and that attacks could take place through sleeper cells in both Europe and the United States. “The West are idiots and fools," one fighter taunted, according...

Even so, defense officials sought to put a positive spin on the mission. “This operation, by the way, was a flawless operation,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said in a briefing with reporters Thursday afternoon. “But the hostages were not there.”