Full Coverage: Confronting the Islamic State militants

Deepening the involvement of a reluctant ally in the fight against the militants of Islamic State, Turkey for the first time sent warplanes to strike targets associated with the jihadist group inside Syria, U.S. and Turkish officials said Saturday.

In a demoralizing blow to Iraq’s offensive against Islamic State, a suicide bomber from the militant group managed to kill two Iraqi army generals in a single strike on Thursday, according to military accounts.

France said a big “merci” to three Americans and a Briton who overpowered a gunman on a high-speed train, giving the four men the country’s highest honor in a ceremony at the presidential palace Monday.

The war against antiquities being waged by Islamic State militants is part of a codified, systematic campaign of cultural annihilation, experts say, that reached a new apex with the demolition of a 1st century temple in Syria.

“He seemed like he was ready to fight to the end. So were we.”

The guide had tears in his eyes as he stood in the remains of the majestic temple of Bel, an ancient deity, the edifice’s stately columns gouged with holes as a result of recent shelling.

A U.S. military airstrike in northern Iraq has killed Fadhil Ahmad Hayali, second in command of Islamic State and primary coordinator for moving weapons and fighters to militant strongholds in Iraq and Syria, the White House and Pentagon said Friday.

It’s been a very hot summer in Egypt, with not only more scorching temperatures than usual, but an accelerating tempo of violence.

He was a world-renowned scholar of antiquities, enchanted into his old age by Syria’s fabled city of Palmyra, which he called among the most beautiful in the world.

Islamic State extremists have issued a call to war against Turkey, urging supporters in the country to rise up and conquer Istanbul, the country’s largest city.

Syrian government warplanes struck a crowded market in a rebel stronghold near Damascus on Sunday, a watchdog group said, killing 82 people and wounding more than 250.

The U.S. is investigating whether Islamic State militants used a mustard gas agent against Kurdish peshmerga forces in at least two incidents, most recently this week in northern Iraq, officials said.

American hostage Kayla Mueller was repeatedly forced to have sex with Abu Bakr Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State extremist group, U.S. intelligence officials told her family in June.

In what could mark an ominous shift in tactics, the Egyptian affiliate of Islamic State on Wednesday posted a gruesome online image purportedly showing the beheaded body of a Croatian man who was abducted last month on the outskirts of Cairo.

Of all the terrorist leaders sending out suicide bombers in Africa, Boko Haram’s Abubakar Shekau is probably the most globally recognizable: Who could forget that leering laugh as he boasted last year of kidnapping nearly 300 schoolgirls to use as “slaves”?

When Rahmat and Afrian talk about Islamic State, their eyes widen, their speech slows, and their expressions soften into smiles.

Human rights and church groups voiced concern Friday for the fate of more than 200 civilians, including many Christians, reportedly kidnapped by the Islamic State militant group in Syria’s Homs province.

Islamic State’s Egyptian affiliate released a video Wednesday threatening to kill a Croatian hostage in 48 hours if Muslim women aren’t released from the country’s jails.

Despite their common objective of ridding the Middle East of Islamic State militants, Russia and the United States have been unable to get past the many issues that divide them to join forces against the extremists.

U.S. officials Monday confirmed an expanded bombing campaign in Syria that increases the risk of confrontation with forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad, possibly drawing Washington more deeply into that country’s punishing four-year war.

The online conversation with the Mosul resident began with pleasantries.

Russian officials warned Monday that the U.S. decision to back allied Syrian rebels with airstrikes threatens to unleash wider chaos and instability in Syria, now in its fifth year of civil war.

Heavily armed militants claiming allegiance to Islamic State carried out a broad assault on Egyptian security forces in the Sinai Peninsula on Wednesday, a daylong battle that left scores of troops, civilians and extremists dead and raised the specter of full-blown warfare in the rugged enclave.

Islamic State militants beheaded two women on charges of “sorcery” in a northeastern province of Syria, a monitoring group reported Tuesday, in what it said marked the Sunni extremist group’s first decapitations of female civilians.

President Abdel Fattah Sisi, paying tribute to his assassinated top prosecutor, on Tuesday signaled the start of an even harsher security crackdown targeting “enemies” of his government.

The thunderous bomb blast that killed Egypt’s state prosecutor on Monday could herald a deadly new phase in the authoritarian government’s nearly 2-year-old battle to eradicate Islamist extremists.

The young man landed before dawn at Kuwait’s gleaming international airport, authorities said — and within hours had carried out one of the deadliest acts of domestic terrorism to strike the normally tranquil Persian Gulf emirate.

Kurdish fighters in the Syrian border city of Kobani, backed by U.S.

As hundreds of frightened tourists fled Tunisia on Saturday, the North African country’s leaders announced stringent new security measures in response to a massacre at a popular Mediterranean resort that left at least 38 people dead, nearly two-thirds of them British visitors.

Armed militants struck within hours of each other on three continents Friday, wielding bombs, firearms and a gruesome display of a decapitated head in a demonstration of the growing global reach of Islamist violence.

Islamic State fighters on Thursday attacked Kobani, the Syrian town on the Turkish border they besieged for months before being repulsed in January by Kurdish militias assisted by punishing airstrikes from a U.S.

In announcing a new program to coordinate efforts to recover Americans held by foreign terrorists, President Obama on Wednesday assured their families that “we will stand by you” and share information.

President Obama said Wednesday the U.S. government has at times failed the families of Americans held hostage overseas by communicating poorly or failing to coordinate recovery efforts, but he promised Wednesday that “that ends today” with a set of new policies.

Relatives who try to pay ransom to free a family member being held hostage by terrorists will no longer face the threat of prosecution under a new policy from the Obama administration that seeks to streamline U.S. rescue efforts after several high-profile deaths.

A U.S. airstrike in Iraq killed an Islamic State fighter suspected of involvement in the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, that resulted in the deaths of Ambassador J.

The commander of the besieged air base west of town had a message of defiance for the world.

Terrorist violence exploded around the world last year, driven by a surge in attacks by the Islamic State extremist group in the Middle East and Boko Haram in West Africa, the State Department said in a report Friday.

Pentagon officials have warned for months that Islamic State, a Sunni extremist group that President Obama initially dismissed as a “JV team,” is nimble, aggressive and unlike any previous terrorist group.

President Obama acknowledged Monday that the U.S.

Islamic State militants and their followers have discovered an unnerving new communications and recruiting tool that has stymied U.S. counter-terrorism agencies: instant messaging apps on smartphones that encrypt the texts or destroy them almost immediately.

Whether the pen is mightier than the sword may be open for debate, but one country is taking no chances and using both weapons in the fight against Islamic State militants.

A bombing Tuesday killed dozens of people in the northeast Nigeria city of Maiduguri, the latest in the almost daily attacks there since the inauguration last week of the country’s new president.

Nearly three years ago, a Saudi Arabian university student applied for a passport to travel to Syria or Iraq, where he hoped to join two cousins fighting for the extremist group now known as Islamic State.

The Obama administration intensified its defense of the president’s strategy against Islamic State militants Sunday, with Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter making a vigorous case that the terrorist group can only be defeated if the Iraqis “develop the will to fight.”

Islamic State militants Friday claimed responsibility for a deadly bombing at a Shiite Muslim mosque in Saudi Arabia, marking the Sunni Muslim organization’s first formal assertion that it had carried out an attack on the kingdom’s soil.

Islamic State militants have entered the museum in the captured Syrian city of Palmyra, but there was no immediate word about the fate of precious artifacts or of the fabled ruins outside town, Syria’s antiquities chief said Thursday.

Bombs tore through two crowded mosques here in Yemen’s capital on Friday, and state television reported at least 137 people dead.

The extremist group Islamic State claimed responsibility Thursday for an attack on a major museum in Tunisia’s capital that killed 23 people and injured dozens of others, including many foreign tourists.

The man fiddled with a padlock securing a gate outside a convenience store.

The Afghan government said Tuesday that forces belonging to the Islamic State militant organization have taken root in the country, its first official acknowledgment that the group based in Iraq and Syria had reached so far to the east.

Pro-government forces in Iraq that have besieged the militant-held city of Tikrit were at a standstill Monday, in what officials said was a deliberate hiatus designed to allow civilians to escape the city.

Peering from his trench on a ridgeline fortified with sandbags, the Kurdish commander gazed toward an Islamic State-held village next to a swath of territory recently seized from the extremist forces.

Islamic State has accepted a pledge of allegiance by Nigerian extremist group Boko Haram, announcing the expansion of the Syrian-based organization into sub-Saharan Africa.

More than 80% of the lights in Syria have been extinguished in the last four years, according to humanitarian agencies that say the country’s devastating civil war is pushing its people into the dark ages – literally and figuratively.

Iraqi government troops and allied militiamen battled their way Wednesday into the city of Tikrit, threatening to deal a punishing blow to Islamic State militants in the hometown of former strongman Saddam Hussein.

A month ago, the family of a young Palestinian man was horrified to discover his photo on the cover of Dabiq, the Islamic State magazine, with an interview inside purporting to detail his recruitment by Israel’s spy agency, Mossad.

Relatives of the three London schoolgirls who traveled to Syria to join the Islamic State told British members of Parliament on Tuesday that they had no idea the teenagers were being radicalized.

The social media post features an odd incarnation of war booty: plundered sacks of dried lentils, humanitarian aid turned spoils of a punishing conflict.

As Iraqi forces pressed their advance Thursday on the militant-held city of Tikrit, Prime Minister Haider Abadi moved to quell concerns of sectarian-fueled retribution against civilians, urging troops “to respect human rights and preserve [civilian] property.”

Islamic State extremists Thursday razed an ancient site at Nimrud in Iraq, according to government officials, who accused the group of using heavy vehicles to remove all traces of precious archaeological remains.

Thousands of Iraqi troops backed by Iranian-trained Shiite Muslim militias pushed north Monday toward Tikrit, Iraq, marking a major offensive to wrest control of the strategic and heavily symbolic city from the militant group Islamic State.

Snare drums rustle and trumpets blare.

British authorities came under pressure Friday to explain how they let the suspected militant who would come to represent the extreme brutality of the group Islamic State slip through their grasp.

When Islamic State extremists took sledgehammers to what may have been centuries-old treasures in the Iraqi city of Mosul, they were indulging in a long and ruinous tradition of intolerance that has destroyed priceless artifacts around the planet.

Islamic State fighters have taken some 220 Christians captive in northeastern Syria in the last three days, activists said Thursday.

A video released Thursday appears to show Islamic State militants methodically destroying centuries-old artifacts in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, which would be the group’s most brazen attack to date on antiquities regarded by the extremists as idolatrous.

The knife-wielding militant who appears in a string of grisly beheading videos, his face concealed by a black balaclava and speaking in British-accented English, has come to personify the brutality of the extremist group Islamic State.

Aqsa Mahmood grew up in an affluent part of Glasgow, Scotland, and attended a prestigious private school.

Here are two things that are true that, to the ranters on conservative talk radio, might seem contradictory: 1) The Islamic State terrorists are fanatical about their Muslim identity and 2) the United States is not fighting a holy war against Muslims.

Pressure mounted on British counter-terrorism authorities Monday to explain why they failed to stop three teenage girls from boarding a flight to Turkey on what their families fear was a journey to join Islamic State in Syria.

The Pentagon plan for a major ground assault to retake the northern Iraqi city of Mosul from Islamic State is bold, ambitious — and perplexing.

For nearly four years, the West has largely stayed on the sidelines as Libya descended into post-revolution chaos.

For weeks, their families had hoped and prayed. On Sunday, their worst fears were realized.

The parents of Austin Tice, a freelance journalist captured in Syria nearly three years ago, are launching an online ad campaign and petition drive this week aimed at revamping U.S. policies concerning Americans taken hostage overseas.

Iraqi forces repelled an Islamic State militant attack Friday on an air base in western Iraq where some 400 U.S. troops are present, according to accounts from the Pentagon and the Iraqi military.

Beheadings have become commonplace in the territories held by the militant Islamic State, but the severed head reportedly found last month in the eastern Syrian city of Al-Mayadeen was nevertheless unusual.

To the editor: I was a doubter of the many persons who sacrificed their lives in the name of humanity — and now, no more.

When President Obama went on national television in September to announce that he was going to war against Islamic State, he said, in what seemed like a throwaway line, that he welcomed “congressional support for this effort.”

President Obama formally asked Congress to authorize military operations against Islamic State, seeking to put lawmakers on record in support of a Middle East conflict that seems likely to intensify in coming months and last beyond the end of his time in office.

An attempt to rescue Kayla Mueller and other American hostages occurred in a July 4 raid previously disclosed by the Pentagon.

The United Arab Emirates resumed airstrikes on Islamic State targets Tuesday as part of the U.S.

Little by little, family by family, word began filtering out in this small town nestled against the craggy foothills north of Phoenix.

At an age when most kids are preoccupied with friends and school, Kayla Jean Mueller devoted herself to helping those in need around the world.

A boisterous pro-government rally brought thousands into the streets of Jordan’s capital Friday as the nation’s leaders vowed an intensified offensive against the militant group Islamic State.

A former Taliban commander who was believed to be recruiting fighters for the Islamic State militant group was killed in southern Afghanistan, officials said Monday.

The gruesome killing of a Jordanian pilot at the hands of Islamic State militants has unleashed a wave of revulsion, demands for retribution and pro-government rallies across the kingdom.

Acts of individual violence and terror can at times be transformative, representing extraordinary tipping points that changed history.

Jordanian fighter planes have destroyed dozens of targets in a ramped-up bombardment against Islamic State positions in response to the killing of a captive Jordanian pilot, the nation’s top airman said Sunday.

A Jordanian pilot’s brutal immolation at the hands of the militants of Islamic State drew condemnation from across the Arab world, but the grim outcome of his capture was already testing the will of regional allies taking part in the U.S.

King Abdullah II of Jordan vowed Wednesday that his country would exact “relentless” retribution against Islamic State militants, as many in the Arab world united in revulsion after learning that a captive pilot had been burned alive in a metal cage.

Britain should be doing more to help fight the Islamic State militant group, according to a report issued Thursday by lawmakers.

A Jordanian government spokesman said two prisoners were executed by hanging early Wednesday, including a would-be female suicide bomber from Al Qaeda, according to news reports.

Bullet casings litter the streets, unexploded mortar shells burrow into the pavement.

Islamic State militants have beheaded a Japanese journalist, according to video released Saturday on the Internet, ending a wrenching drama that has gripped Japan and jolted another close U.S. ally, Jordan.

Working from this sun-scorched desert base, U.S. and allied commanders are beginning perhaps the most perilous phase of their fight against Islamic State: an attempt to recapture Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, from the entrenched militant forces.

Islamic State militants launched a multi-pronged attack Friday on the northern Iraqi oil hub of Kirkuk, seizing a downtown building and attacking at least three points along the city’s defensive perimeter, authorities said.

As another reported deadline passed Thursday, Jordanian authorities said they were seeking proof that a captive air force pilot was alive before releasing a female militant as part of a proposed prisoner swap.

Men and women picked through the rubble of Kobani on Wednesday, taking stock of the cost of war after Kurdish fighters finally drove Islamic State militants out of the shattered Syrian city this week.

A Libyan affiliate of the extremist Islamic State group claimed responsibility Wednesday for an attack on a Tripoli luxury hotel that killed 10 people, including an American and four Europeans.

The Jordanian government declared its willingness Wednesday to swap a female prisoner who took part in a deadly rampage of hotel bombings in 2005 for a Jordanian pilot held by the Islamic State extremist group.

The mother of a Japanese hostage believed to be in the hands of Islamic extremists made an emotional appeal for her son’s life Wednesday, hours before a deadline set by his captors was to expire.

Seven months into the takeover of Iraq’s second-largest city by Islamist extremists, electricity, rice, flour and medical supplies are dwindling.

Kurdish fighters in the Syrian border town of Kobani appeared poised Monday to deal a decisive defeat to Islamic State militants after months of street clashes and U.S. aerial bombardment, signaling a major setback for the extremist group.

From bikini-clad beachgoer to veiled jihadist fugitive, the partner of Paris gunman Amedy Coulibaly underwent a startling metamorphosis that illuminates the dangerous potential behind militant groups’ efforts to increase their recruiting of female terrorists.

As the mother of one of two Japanese men held by Islamic State militants begged for his release Friday, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s administration said Britain and Australia had agreed to help try to secure the hostages’ freedom.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday called for the immediate release of two Japanese hostages being held by Islamic State extremists seeking a $200-million ransom.

The Islamic State group released about 200 Yazidis held for five months in Iraq, mostly elderly, infirm captives who likely slowed the extremists down, Kurdish military officials said Sunday.

On the streets of Gennevilliers, a working-class suburb north of Paris, residents said there was little indication that a militant bent on warfare on French soil was living in their midst.

After months of delay, the Pentagon announced plans Friday to send several hundred U.S. troops to help train and equip Syrian rebel fighters to battle Islamic State militants.

In the wake of a video purporting to show a child executing two prisoners, Islamic State militants released images Thursday of toddlers practicing their skill with toy guns.

Syrian rebels have been forced to agree to a 10-day cease-fire in a neighborhood within the central city of Homs that has become their last bastion there after two years of siege.

At the hair salon on her wedding day, a fellow bride turned to Tuqaa Afash and asked who her fiance was.

When millions of Shiite Muslim pilgrims descended last month on the shrine with twin gold domes in this holy city, many Iraqis expected sectarian fighting to erupt.

A new video released Saturday shows a British photojournalist held captive by Islamic State giving a stylized media tour of the embattled northern Iraqi city of Mosul -- visiting a market, a hospital and even climbing on a police motorcycle to refute reports that the city’s infrastructure has been crippled.

Violence in Iraq killed at least 12,282 civilians last year, the deadliest since the sectarian strife of 2007, United Nations officials said.

Year after year, the acts of Islamic militants grow more terrifying.

Supporters of Islamic State militants appealed via social media this week for the execution of a Jordanian pilot whom the group captured after his plane crashed in Syria on Christmas Eve.

Dozens of men with grim faces filed like mourners up a dirt path into the cavernous hall of the Kasasbeh tribal office, or diwan.

The Jordanian parliament issued a stern warning Thursday as relatives pleaded with Islamic State militants holding a Jordanian pilot captive.

The children awoke the day before Christmas behind blast walls and armed guards, in a dingy Syrian Catholic schoolhouse strung with clotheslines.

A Jordanian F-16 jet crashed Wednesday in an area of northeastern Syria under the control of Islamic State militants, who quickly captured the pilot, according to statements from both sides.

A German journalist who recently spent 10 days with Islamic State extremists in Iraq and Syria said he was surprised to find many were foreign fighters – including some Americans.

Algerian troops tracked down and killed the leader of an Islamic militant group that beheaded a French hostage on video three months ago, the country’s Defense Ministry said Tuesday.

Raped, tortured and forced to marry their Islamic State captors, some women and girls from Iraq’s Yazidi religious minority resorted to the only means of escape available: suicide.

Under cover of darkness, three dozen U.S. commandos crept up on a walled compound in southern Yemen.

Members of the Shuayat tribe battling Islamic State militants in eastern Syria have found 230 bodies of their brethren dumped in apparent mass graves, activists and the Syrian government news agency have reported.

Bright lights glared overhead at the outdoor playing field where Tarik Khan was deep into a friendly game of seven-a-side soccer in the late-November cold.

The Islamic State on Thursday released a recording of a speech said to be by its leader, potentially contradicting rumors of his death in a recent airstrike by the U.S.

The U.S.

Iranian warplanes have launched several airstrikes in recent days against Islamic State militants in eastern Iraq, U.S. and Iranian officials said Tuesday, the latest sign that America’s longtime adversary is conducting a parallel but largely unacknowledged military campaign in the conflict.

Iraq’s central government and leaders of the nation’s semiautonomous Kurdish region unveiled an oil and budget deal Tuesday aimed at resolving a months-long dispute and presenting a united front against Islamic State militants.

A group with ties to Al Qaeda has gained significant ground across Syria in recent weeks, creating the possibility that the war-ravaged nation will be divided among two opposing militant Islamic groups and the government of President Bashar Assad — with much of the U.S.

Security officials have identified two more Europeans among the Islamic State militants who appeared in a video recording their slaughter of Syrian troops last week.

In mid-September, as the U.S. military prepared to launch cruise missiles against Islamic State militants in Syria for the first time, CIA analysts lobbied to expand the target list to include eight possible locations for leaders of a band of battle-hardened Al Qaeda operatives moving between towns west of Aleppo.

Authorities in Paris said Monday that they had identified a French convert to Islam as one of the knife-wielding Islamic State extremists pictured in a grisly video showing a beheaded U.S. aid worker and slaughtered Syrian soldiers.

Islamic State militants have beheaded Peter Kassig, a U.S. aid worker and former Army Ranger who was captured last year in Syria while on a private humanitarian mission, the White House confirmed Sunday.

Money might be the root of all evil, but that’s a risk Islamic State seems willing to take.

Iraqi officials said Tuesday that government forces had captured Baiji after fierce battles for the city, home to the nation’s largest oil refinery, but anti-government militants insisted they remained in control.

The Pentagon is considering sending U.S. troops to fight beside Iraqi soldiers as they take on more complex missions in the battle against Islamic State militants, according to Gen.

After six years and a $40-million investigation, the Democratic-led Senate Intelligence Committee is expected to release conclusions this month from its controversial probe of CIA detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects overseas during the George W.

The U.S. carried out airstrikes that targeted a gathering of Islamic State leaders in northern Iraq, military officials said Saturday.

The seller’s fingers dance across the stacks of discs crowding his table, his words racing as he foists one DVD after another on a customer.

The White House declined to comment Thursday on a news report that President Obama has secretly written to Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei seeking his help in fighting the militant group Islamic State and in reaching a nuclear agreement.

An overnight U.S. aerial assault in northern Syria struck Al Qaeda-linked extremists who were plotting to attack the West, the U.S. military said Thursday.

The Islamic State militant group kidnapped and tortured dozens of boys in Syria this year, beating them with hoses or electrical cables and forcing them to watch videos of beheadings and combat, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday.

Muslim leaders nationwide say the FBI is pressuring some Islamic community members and religious leaders to spy on fellow Muslims as part of a government effort to combat extremist recruiting in the U.S.

Hussein Shehab knew things were going badly when he spotted the Iraqi police pickup trucks.

Al Qaeda-linked fighters have overrun key northern bastions of U.S.

Iraq’s largest Shiite militia, which has been incorporated into the U.S.

By all accounts, the killings have been summary, brutal and public: At least 200 members of a western Iraqi tribe that has defied the militants of Islamic State have been lined up and shot dead in recent days, including dozens whose executions came to light Sunday.

Sgt. Ahmed Hassan says he hasn’t fired a shot at Islamic State fighters in six weeks.

Islamic State forces have carried out another mass killing of civilians in western Iraq, officials said Saturday – the systematic executions of at least 50 fellow Sunni Muslim men and women belonging to a tribe that has defied the extremist militants.

So Satan marries a Jewish woman in Iraq.

Some rebel reinforcements reached the besieged Syrian city of Kobani, officials said Wednesday.

A spate of terrorist attacks in Canada and New York City last week appears to have been inspired by calls from Islamic State and other militants to launch lone-wolf attacks that could signal the rise of a kind of DIY terrorism, sowing fear on a smaller but more pervasive scale.

The battle for the Syrian city of Kobani took a grim new twist with the release of a video depicting a British journalist held captive by the militant group Islamic State delivering a “news report” from the border town, predicting imminent defeat for the Kurdish defenders and mocking U.S.

Mahmoud Imam draws smoke from a cigarette, squints and points to his village in the farmlands of Syria just east of the besieged Kurdish city of Kobani.

The veteran rebel stood atop a pile of rocks, gazing across a barbed-wire fence at his homeland, Syria, where a black flag fluttered in the distance.

First came billowing banners in yellow, green and black.

Islamic State still generates tens of millions of dollars a month in illicit income despite a U.S.

Senior Iraqi officials and commanders are calling for intensified U.S. airstrikes and more military aid, arguing that the 10-week-old American-led effort has been too modest to drive Islamic State fighters out of key towns and districts.

Lawmakers in Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region on Wednesday approved the deployment of fighters known as peshmerga to aid fellow Kurds battling Islamic State militants in the northern Syrian city of Kobani.

They make the daily trek to a stark hilltop overlooking their hometown, Kobani, once an anonymous Syrian border city but now the site of an epic battle beamed live globally via satellite trucks parked on the Turkish side.

For weeks, Washington has been nudging a reluctant Turkey to assume a more forceful role in President Obama’s anti-militant coalition and come to the aid of Kurdish forces battling to push Islamic State fighters out of the besieged Syrian city of Kobani.

Having fled encroaching Islamic State militants, Ali Hussein Abbas, his wife and two young children arrived at a checkpoint on the outskirts of the capital of the Kurdistan region, hoping to find refuge.

Each day, Mohammed Jemmo ventures to a barren, wind-swept hilltop overlooking his embattled hometown, where two of his sons and a daughter are fighting with the Kurdish militia resisting an offensive by Islamist extremists.

‎Aveen Khalf Kasim, 7, walked around one of the seven pillars at the main shrine of the Yazidi faith, hastily untying and tying knots.

While an international military effort has focused on Islamic State advances in northern Syria and in Anbar province in western Iraq, the extremists have stepped up their terrorist attacks in the Iraqi capital.

Amid growing signs of the limits of the U.S.

Turkish warplanes bombed Kurdish insurgent hideaways in the country’s remote eastern regions Tuesday, threatening the delicate peace process between Ankara and the nation’s ethnic Kurdish minority.

President Obama will meet with more than 20 foreign chiefs of defense at Andrews Air Force Base on Tuesday to discuss strategy in the battle against Islamic State militants.

The looming advance of Islamic State fighters west of Baghdad and the persistent drumbeat of suicide car bombings here have imparted a sense of menace and foreboding in the Iraqi capital.

In the latest edition of an English-language magazine published by Islamic State, the militants justify forcing ethnic Yazidi women into sexual slavery – a practice they say is encouraged under Islamic law.

Simko Karamogh sits smoking a cigarette and recounts a close-quarters gun battle with an Islamic State fighter in the besieged city of Kobani.

Turkey has agreed to allow U.S. warplanes to use its air bases for missions in Syria, as well as provide rebels there with light arms and train them with infantry tactics for the ongoing battle against Islamic State militants, the Pentagon said Sunday.

As warplanes from the U.S. and the United Arab Emirates pounded Islamic State fighters near the Syrian city of Kobani for a third day, the U.S.

Though a coalition of Western countries is training Kurdish forces in northern Iraq to more effectively fight Islamic State militants, Kurdish commanders and officers say the effort is moving slowly and not keeping up with the military strength and speed of their enemy.

Britain conducted its first airstrikes against the Islamic State extremist group on Tuesday, hitting two targets in northwest Iraq, British officials announced.

As the migration of disaffected young men and women to join the fighting in Syria and Iraq intensifies, so do fears among security services worldwide that their radicalized nationals will bring terrorist plots home with them when the battles are over.

The U.S.

The Nabi mosque glinted in the noontime glare, a shiny backdrop to shepherds corralling hundreds of sheep in a dirt field here in southeastern Turkey.

From the sky, U.S. warplanes have been dropping bombs to impede the advance of militant Islamist fighters on the Syrian border city of Kobani.

Islamist militants besieging the Syrian border city of Kobani appeared poised late Friday for a direct assault on the predominantly Kurdish enclave after a day of intense shelling.

A video released on the Internet on Friday appears to show British hostage Alan Henning being beheaded by a masked Islamic State fighter, the militant-monitoring SITE Intelligence Group reported.

The crowd scanned the opposite side of the valley, looking for signs of movement across the border in the Syrian town of Ayn al-Arab, known as Kobani to its mostly Kurdish inhabitants.

Turkish lawmakers Thursday approved allowing ground troops into Syria and Iraq, as riot police prevented Kurdish defenders from reaching the besieged Syrian border town of Ayn al-Arab, known as Kobani to its mostly Kurdish residents.

Iraqi Kurdish forces have captured a strategic town along the border with Syria as part of an offensive against Islamist militants in northern Iraq, the Kurdish military command said Tuesday.

The United States and Arab partners conducted eight airstrikes against militant positions across northern Syria on Sunday and Monday, destroying armed vehicles, extremist compounds and a training camp, among other targets, the Pentagon said.

President Obama conceded in an interview that the United States underestimated Islamic State militants who have taken over swaths of Syria and Iraq, calling the fight against violent extremism in the Middle East “a generational challenge” that the region’s nations have to resolve through political and economic means.

Shaky video posted to YouTube last week pans across foot-high bundles of $100 bills topped by two shining gold ingots.

U.S.

The British Parliament voted Friday to carry out airstrikes in Iraq against the extremist group Islamic State in a move that for now keeps the nation’s military out of the conflict next door in Syria.

Arab allies were responsible for the majority of airstrikes against the Islamic State militant group’s oil refineries on Wednesday, flying more warplanes and dropping more bombs than U.S. aircraft, a Pentagon official said.

The FBI believes it has identified the masked Islamic State militant who appeared in the videotaped beheadings of two American journalists, bureau Director James B.

A human rights lawyer and activist was killed in the Iraqi city of Mosul by Islamic State militants because of Facebook posts critical of the group’s destruction of shrines, churches, mosques and cultural sites, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq reported Thursday.

U.S. and New York officials strongly downplayed a claim Thursday by the Iraqi prime minister that his country uncovered a plot to attack subways in New York and Paris.

Making the first major push to choke off financing for Islamic State, U.S. and allied Arab warplanes bombed a dozen small oil refineries in eastern Syria on Wednesday that U.S. officials said were part of a $2 million-a-day revenue stream for the Sunni Muslim extremist group.

The deadly Tomahawks roared in from two directions in the predawn hours Tuesday, as the guided-missile destroyer Arleigh Burke in the Red Sea and the cruiser Philippine Sea in the north Persian Gulf fired 47 cruise missiles across the cold desert and into the heart of northern Syria.