World
The Islamic State group releases a video appearing to show militants killing a Kurdish man as a warning to forces fighting it in northern Iraq. The BBC reports:
The video, entitled a Message in Blood, shows several men in orange jumpsuits said to be captured Kurdish fighters. The victim is then seen kneeling near a mosque in the IS-held city of Mosul before he is beheaded.
The jihadists warn that others will be killed if Kurdish leaders continue to back the US. Kurdish "peshmerga" fighters from the autonomous Kurdistan Region of northern Iraq have been trying to counter an advance by IS, backed by US air strikes.
Earlier, IS videos from Syria appeared to show the mass killing of Syrian soldiers taken prisoner after their base was overrun.
Meanwhile, President Barack Obama said on Thursday that he has not yet developed a broad strategy for confronting Islamic State in an acknowledgement that he has not decided whether to launch air strikes against the militant group in Syria. Reuters writes:
"We don't have a strategy yet," Obama told a White House news conference ahead of meeting top national security advisers in the Situation Room about how to proceed against Islamic State.
Obama's decision to begin U.S. surveillance flights over Syria earlier this week prompted speculation that he was on the brink of expanding the fight against Islamic State from Iraq into Syria, prompting criticism from some lawmakers who worry they have not been properly consulted.
There has been a growing call from both Republicans and Obama's fellow Democrats in Congress for lawmakers to vote on whether the United States should broaden its action against the Islamic State.
Obama, who shied away from launching airstrikes in Syria a year ago to punish Syrian President Bashir al-Assad for use of chemical weapons against his own people, has been reticent about getting involved in Syria's civil war, where he believes there are few good options for the United States to pursue.
Public anger at the beheading of American journalist James Foley, however, has led him to consider hitting Islamic State targets in Syria. So far the U.S. campaign against the group has been limited to striking the group's forces in Iraq but not taking on Islamic State's primary stronghold in Syria.
