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Several shocked world leaders, including president Barack Obama of US and Britain's prime minister, David Cameroon have publicly condemned the gruesome killing of a US journalist, James Foley, who was beheaded by ISIS jihadists in a video footage released yesterday, Tuesday, August 19, to a bewildered world.
18.55 The parents of American journalist James Foley have said they believe their son was a "martyr for freedom".
Diane and John Foley addressed the media outside their Rochester, New Hampshire, home on Wednesday.
Diane Foley says her son was courageous to the end and called his death "just evil."
John Foley said it "haunts" him how cruel his son's death was. "It testifies to his courage - he was courageous to the end," he said. "We believe he was a martyr for freedom."
18.33 David Cameron has said it seems "increasingly likely" that a British jihadist carried out the murder.
Speaking to reporters in Number 10, Mr Cameron said: "Let me condemn the barbaric and brutal act that has taken place and let's be clear what this act is - it is an act of murder, and murder without any justification.
"We have not identified the individual responsible, but from what we have seen it looks increasingly likely that it is a British citizen.
"This is deeply shocking. But we know that far too many British citizens have travelled to Iraq and travelled to Syria to take part in extremism and violence. And what we must do is redouble all all our efforts to stop people from going."
18.14 The Telegraph's Ruth Sherlock has filed a dispatch on her memories of James Foley. Here is an extract:
I had done the
gruelling journey by car, but James Foley, ever resourceful, arrived in a
chinook helicopter. He had caught a lift with a group of medics who were flying to a field hospital close to Sirte, the Libyan city where Colonel Muammer Gaddafi and his troops were making a last stand.
And from then on that's how I knew Jim: as the man always more deeply embedded with the people we were reporting on, always further forward on the frontline, always wanting to get closer to what was happening.
We were part of the same tribe: a group of freelancer journalists who, with borrowed flak jackets and a few dollars in our pockets, were driven to Libya by our love for reporting.
[...] Three of my friends from that early freelance tribe have since disappeared at the hands of the Islamic State in Syria.
To these crazed minds, there is no distinction between a journalist, an aid worker, a soldier or a spy. Any westerner is labelled an enemy of their warped values, in which beheadings and torture are considered reverent acts.
Jim's life was taken, as, feeling empowered by their victories in Iraq and Syria, the jihadists decided to raise the stakes to promote their vague notion of a battle against the "crusaders of the West".
Now, a second colleague from Libya, Steven Sotloff, has been promised a similar, terrible fate.
Some of the worst crimes have been committed by Briton's in the extremist group. Jim's killer had a British accent, and social media is rife with the tortures and murders enacted by by jihadists who once lived as citizens of the United Kingdom.
In these dark times, both for foreign workers in the Middle East and for the millions Syrians, Libyans and Iraqis now living under the extremist's rule, we have to hope that somewhere, somehow, reason can be found."
18.00 Mr Obama's short statement has just concluded. We'll have footage of his statement up shortly.
17.58 Mr Obama: Today the American people will say a prayer for those who loved Jim.
17.56 "The United States of America will continue to do what we must do to protect our people... we act against ISIL, standing alongside others," says Mr Obama. "A group like ISIL has no place in the 21st century."
17.54 "No faith teaches people to massacre innocents," says Mr Obama.
17.54 President Obama has just started speaking, saying the world is "appalled" at the murder of James Foley.
"Jim was taken from us in an act of violence that shocks the conscience of the entire world," he said, confirming that he has spoken to Jim's parents.
17.49 President Obama called the parents of American journalist James Foley, according to Twitter reports:
<noframe>Twitter: ABC World News - NEW: White House confirms President Obama called the parents of beheaded American journalist James Foley - <a href="http://www.twitter.com/jonkarl" target="_blank">@jonkarl</a></noframe>
17.27 Ban Ki-Moon, head of the United Nations, condemns in "the strongest terms" the beheading of James Foley, says his spokesman, calling it an "abominable crime".
17.20 US war planes continue to strike Islamic State targets in Iraq despite the militants' killing of a U.S. journalist in retaliation for President Barack Obama's air campaign in Iraq, US officials said on Wednesday.
The United States has been conducting attacks on Islamic State vehicles and other targets in northern Iraq since earlier this month, as the White House seeks to help Iraq push back militants who have poured into the country from neighboring Syria.
17.18 A former deputy director of the CIA has called the murder of James Foley "ISIS' first terrorist attack against the United States." Mike Morell told CBS News:
The definition of
terrorism is political violence, violence for political effect. We should mark
the date down, because this is ISIS' first terrorist attack against the United
States." Islamic State, Mr Morell said, is very clearly "trying to intimidate the US into backing off" from the policy of airstrikes in Iraq.
"I think our response should be, and I think our response will be, to not do that," said Mr Morell, who used to be in charge of preparing President Obama's daily intelligence briefings.
17.12 US President Barack Obama is due to give a statement at 5.45pm (12.45pm ET)
<noframe>Twitter: The White House - At 12:45pm ET, President Obama will deliver a statement. Watch here → <a href="http://t.co/7QUc084BX3" target="_blank">http://t.co/7QUc084BX3</a></noframe>
16.40 The White House has confirmed that the James Foley video is authentic. NSC spokesperson Caitlin Hayden said:
The US
Intelligence Community has analysed the recently released video showing US
citizens James Foley and Steven Sotloff. We have reached the judgment that this
video is authentic. We will continue to provide updates as they are available.
16.21 President Obama was apparently already aware that IS was threatening to avenge US airstrikes in Iraq by murdering James Foley, reports the Telegraph's Rosa Prince.
A senior White House official has told ABC News that the administration had received information about the threat prior to the video's release.
16.14 The sign-makers of Kanfranbel, Syria, honor James Foley:
16.03 Testimonies gathered from civilians who fled the recent offensive by armed groups in the Sinjar district of north-western Iraq have revealed appalling accounts of killing, abduction and sexual violence perpetrated against women and children, according to UNICEF.
"The type and scope of violations against children, women and minority communities in Iraq in the past weeks is one of the worst seen in this century, and is completely unacceptable by any standards or codes of conduct that govern conflict," said Dr. Marzio Babille, UNICEF Iraq Representative.
Child protection specialist teams sent by the agency have so far documented 123 separate cases of rights violations carried out by armed groups when they attacked Yazidi and other minority groups living in areas of Ninewa province close to the border with Syria. So far, 80 of these cases have been verified during investigations carried out by UNICEF
15.50 British counter-terrorism police said on Wednesday they had launched an investigation into an Islamic State video purporting to show the beheading of American journalist James Foley and featuring the voice of a man with a British accent, according to Reuters.
The Metropolitan Police Service Counter Terrorism Command, that aims to protect London and the UK from the threat of terrorism, said in a statement that it was investigating the contents of the video that was posted online.
"We would like to remind the public that viewing, downloading or disseminating extremist material within the UK may constitute an offence under Terrorism legislation," the specialist operations unit added in the statement.
15.10 Rosa Prince has filed a profile piece on Steven Sotloff, the US journalist purported to appear in the IS video.
Here is an extract:
Originally from Miami,
Florida, freelance reporter Steven Joel Sotloff had been based in the Libyan
city of Benghazi when he went on assignment to Syria just over a year ago. Captured close to the Turkish border near Aleppo, he is believed to have been held in Raqqa.
[...] Until his shocking appearance on the IS video, most of the world had been in the dark about Sotloff’s disappearance. His family, parents Arthur and Shirley and sister Lauren, who all still live in Florida, had followed the US government’s advice not to publicise his disappearance.
Now all they want is for the world - and President Obama in particular - to pay attention to his plight.
15.00 30 journalists have been killed in 2014, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, which investigates the death of every journalist to determine if it was work-related. Here is a map showing the fatalities:
Syria has been the most dangerous country in the world for journalists for more than two years.
14.50 The Telegraph's Ruth Sherlock and Sam Tarling have sent this dispatch from Iraq, reporting on the devastation caused by US airstrikes on IS forces that were holding Mosul dam in the north of the country:
14.40 Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, has said that Britons who travel to Iraq and Syria to fight for the Islamic State should be stripped of their British citizenship, the Telegraph's Steven Swinford reports.
Mr Farage said those who choose to fight alongside the group have "rendered themselves effectively stateless" and should be barred from returning to the UK.
"We simply cannot have a situation where militants return and benefit from NHS treatment, welfare benefits, council housing and so forth when they have chosen to go abroad and fight western values in the most appalling way possible," Mr Farage said.
"We also cannot risk these militants coming back to the UK and bringing with them their ideologies and barbarous practices."
14.34 The FBI has spoken with the Foley family and said that while a longer process of authentication is under way, preliminary analysis has shown no reason to believe the video is not real, according to GlobalPost, a Boston-based online publication that employed Foley as a freelancer.
14.30 German Chancellor Angela Merkel is said to be "horrified" about the fate of American journalist James Foley.
The spokesman, Steffen Seibert, told reporters that the video released by Islamic State jihadists depicted "the barbaric, truly merciless murder of a person", calling it a "repulsive document".
The chancellor is
horrified about the fate of the American journalist James Foley, who was
violently abducted in 2012, although there is no official confirmation that it
is his murder shown in the video," he said. Seibert said the German government expressed its "deepest sympathies" to Foley's family for their nearly two-year ordeal "and for the suffering that this video surely inflicted".
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel
14.04 James Foley was captured in Libya in 2011 and spent several weeks in captivity. In this video, he discusses the experience, and the draw of war reporting:
13.58 News of the apparent beheading came as as US air strikes appeared to yield some results, helping Kurdish and federal forces push IS fighters back from some recently-conquered areas in northern Iraq, including the strategic Mosul dam.
According to Kurdish officers, another US air strike was carried out early Wednesday, targeting an apparent jihadist meeting at a school near the dam. Washington did not immediately confirm the raid.
13.56 A humanitarian airlift to northern Iraq began on Wednesday, kicking off a 10-day operation to provide tents and other aid to half a million displaced people who are struggling for survival, United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said.
A cargo plane from Jordan touched down in Arbil, the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, carrying 100 tonnes of emergency supplies, and will be followed by land and sea shipments, the Geneva-based agency said in a statement.
"This is a massive logistics operation ... to help the hundreds of thousands of desperate people who have fled suddenly with nothing but their lives and are now struggling to survive in harsh conditions," said U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres.
13.18 The Sotloff family in Miami have not commented about his plight so far. But the boyfriend of Mr Sotloff's sister Lauren has set up a petition on We the People - a section of the whitehouse.gov website petitioning the White House - calling on the Obama administration to "do everything possible to free American reporter Steven Sotloff from ISIS in Syria and save his life".
The petition is aiming for 100,000 signatures to qualify for a response from the White House.
A man identified by militants as Steven Sotloff appeared at the end of the IS video, when the killer warns that he could be the next captive killed. Mr Sotloff was kidnapped near the Syrian-Turkish border in August 2013; he had freelanced for Time, the National Interest and MediaLine.
13.12 The Telegraph's Colin Freeman has written a piece examining why brave journalists like James Foley go to such dangerous places. It is worth reading in full, but here is an extract:
Having put my own
family through six weeks of hell once when I was kidnapped in Somalia a few
years ago, I can appreciate to some extent the arguments of the stay-at-home
brigade (who, I suspect, include some of my own relatives). For being abducted
is not like other war zone experiences. [...] Nonetheless, having had plenty of time to reflect on this during my stint – there wasn't much else to do – I can cite a number of reasons why Western journalists will still seek to put themselves in harm's way.
One is a sense of historical perspective: despite the hideous novelty of Mr Foley's death being broadcast on the internet, journalists have been busily getting killed, imprisoned, kidnapped and generally mistreated since the profession began, and it would be a shame if modern culture stopped this tradition in its tracks.
The other, though, is that relying on local reporters or stringers to do the job for us, even if they may be less at risk (which isn't always the case) is simply not enough. It isn't just the lofty question of whether they be biased to one side or other, it's about their ability to meet the required standards.
[...] there is, as far as most editors are concerned, still no substitute for despatching their own staff, with their own flair for house style, their own eye for detail, and their own knowledge of how to best tell the story to the newspaper's readers. It is, to put it bluntly, the best way to do justice to the story – and tragedies like Syria and Iraq deserve it.
12.45 Foley’s family went through another kidnapping ordeal in 2011 when forces loyal to former dictator Muammar Qaddafi captured Foley and three other journalists (one of whom was killed) while they were traveling with rebel forces in Libya.
He had been working in war zones for about five years when he was taken captive. Another journalist — South African photographer Anton Hammerl — was shot during their capture and left to die in the desert. Foley and another journalist were later released.
"I'll regret that day for the rest of my life," Foley told The Associated Press in 2011. "I'll regret what happened to Anton."
12.30 Here is a summary of the main developments so far:
• Horrific video footage circulated online on Tuesday appears to show US journalist James Foley being beheaded by an Islamic State (IS) extremist in retaliation for US airstrikes against IS in Iraq. The killer spoke in English, with what sounded like a British accent.
• David Cameron will hold emergency meetings with senior intelligence officials as investigations are carried out into the "shocking and depraved" murder. British intelligence services are trying to piece together evidence to identify who the killer is.
• The killer also issued a threat to US President Barack Obama that the life of a second US journalist, Steven Sotloff, missing since last August, would depend on how the United States acts in Iraq.
• James Foley's mother, Diane, released a statement this morning thanking her son "for all the joy he gave us". "He was an extraordinary son, brother, journalist and person," she wrote on Facebook.
• British jihadists who have joined Isis forces in Iraq are the most "vicious and vociferous fighters" in the organisation's ranks, an expert on terrorists has warned. Shiraz Maher, from King's College London's International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, warned that more and more young British men were being "seduced" by high profile apparent victories for Isis.
12.15 Watch a statement by James Foley's father John in 2013 commending his son's "passion about giving life to stories of people within conflict areas"
11.56 James Foley was on a freelance assignment for GlobalPost when he was abducted in northern Syria on November 22, 2012.
Foley’s last article for GlobalPost detailed the growing frustration with the war among civilians in Aleppo, Syria.
11.50 The Telegraph's executive editor James Kirkup argues that using the word 'execution' to describe James Foley's death is a mistake. He writes:
Execution is
punishment for a crime. Execution is the sentence passed after a trial.
Execution is what the State does to those who break its most important rules. The people who killed James Foley proclaim themselves a state, an Islamic State. They’re not. States have legitimacy that derives from something more than physical violence. States have, to a greater or lesser extent, the consent of their people. IS isn’t a state with established rules that it enforces in a regimented and uniform way. It’s a gang of armed thugs who kill people they dislike or disagree with, in order to get their own way.
So please, let’s not say James Foley was executed. Let’s call his killing what it was: murder.
11.16 A campaign has been launched on Twitter urging people not to share the video purporting to show the murder of James Foley.
Celebrities including actress Mia Farrow are among those urging their followers to shun the horrific beheading footage, which the Islamic State claimed showed the death of the 40-year-old American.
<noframe>Twitter: mia farrow - Blackout on group that murdered James Foley. Don't share video. Give them nothing. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?src=hash&q=%23RespectJamesFoley" target="_blank">#RespectJamesFoley</a></noframe>
Thousands of ordinary users from around the world have also backed the plan to deny IS publicity in horror at what they have done, using the hashtag #ISISmediablackout.
11.12 Shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander has said suggestions that the attack was carried out by a UK national were "particularly concerning". He said in a statement:
Suggestions that
the attack may have been carried out by a UK national are particularly
concerning and the government must now work with international partners to
establish the facts and uncover any possible information about the perpetrator.
ISIL's brutal campaign of terror is already threatening Iraq and the wider region. While the Foreign Secretary has again today ruled out the prospect of British troops being committed to Iraq in a combat role, Labour continues to support steps taken by the UK government both to assist in the humanitarian effort in Iraq, and to help ensure the Peshmerga have the equipment and assistance they need to combat ISIL on the frontline."
11.04 In June 2012, a video was uploaded onto YouTube featuring an interview with Mr Foley during his time covering the uprising against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
Speaking to an off-screen activist – who politely refers to his interviewee as Mr James – the journalist describes what he has witnessed during a trip to a war-ravaged town in Idlib province in the north of the country.
11.00 Twitter is 'actively suspending' accounts related to the graphic footage posted online. Twitter's chief executive Dick Costolo sent out this message:
<noframe>Twitter: dick costolo - We have been and are actively suspending accounts as we discover them related to this graphic imagery. Thank you <a href="https://t.co/jaYQBKVbBF" target="_blank">https://t.co/jaYQBKVbBF</a></noframe>
10.49 French President François Hollande has called for a high-level international conference to discuss ways of combatting Islamic State militants. He made the remarks in an interview with Le Monde published this morning.
Mr Hollande did not specify when a meeting might be held or who would be invited.
"We can no longer stick to the traditional debate of intervention or non-intervention," he said. "We have to come up with a global strategy to fight this group, which is structured, has significant financing, very sophisticated weapons and threatens countries like Iraq, Syria and Lebanon."
Mr Hollande added: "I believe the international situation is the worst we've seen since 2001. We are not dealing with a terrorist group like al Qaeda, but a quasi-terrorist state, Islamic State."
The French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, has said that the Islamic State is a threat not just to countries in the Middle East but also to western Europe.
10.45 British intelligence agencies are likely to use voice recognition software to try to identify the British jihadist who beheaded the American journalist James Foley, the Telegraph's Steven Swinford reports.
Philip Hammond confirmed this morning that British intelligence agencies are analysing the video to try to establish the man's identity.
Counter terrorist officers are expected to run the broadcast through voice–recognition software to see if he is somebody already known to intelligence services.
The man's London accent may also help the services to identify the areas where the extremist grew up and lived.
10.23 David Cameron is returning from his holiday in Cornwall after just a day, following the murder of James Foley.
Mr Cameron said: "If true, the murder of James Foley is shocking and depraved. I will today chair meetings on the situation in Iraq/Syria."
10.00 The video appears to be genuine and is an "appalling example of the brutality of this organisation", British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond has said.
Mr Hammond said the video had not been verified but "all the hallmarks point to it being genuine" and acknowledged that the killer spoke with a British accent.
The Foreign Secretary told the BBC: "Certainly at first pass that's what it looks like and we will obviously want to investigate that further."
Watch: Hammond says identity of the IS militant who beheaded James Foley being 'urgently investigated'
09.55 If the British-accented IS fighter in the video is confirmed as British, he will be seen as the most extreme example yet of a fighter travelling from the UK to take part in brutal violence as part of the militant Islamic State (IS) movement.
Shiraz Maher, from King's College London's International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Unfortunately the British participation in the conflicts now raging in both Syria and Iraq has been has been one of full participation, one that has seen them at the front lines, taking part in the conflict in every way.
"So we have seen British fighters out there operating as suicide bombers, we have seen them operating as executioners.
"Unfortunately they are amongst some of the most vicious and vociferous fighters who are out there. That is unfortunately just a part of their radicalisation."
09.40 Journalists are paying tribute to James Foley on Twitter. Here is a selection:
<noframe>Twitter: Neal Mann - What an awful day,thoughts with James Foley's family. Also with all my friends currently in dangerous places doing their jobs as journalists</noframe>
<noframe>Twitter: Javier Espinosa - RIP <a href="https://twitter.com/search?src=hash&q=%23JamesFoley" target="_blank">#JamesFoley</a>, a great journalist and a great human being <a href="https://twitter.com/search?src=hash&q=%23ISIS" target="_blank">#ISIS</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search?src=hash&q=%23Syria" target="_blank">#Syria</a></noframe>
<noframe>Twitter: Ruth Sherlock - Disgusted by the death of James Foley. Does nothing to stop <a href="https://twitter.com/search?src=hash&q=%23US" target="_blank">#US</a> intervention in <a href="https://twitter.com/search?src=hash&q=%23Iraq" target="_blank">#Iraq</a>. Just shows what primitive reprobates the <a href="https://twitter.com/search?src=hash&q=%23ISIS" target="_blank">#ISIS</a> are.</noframe>
<noframe>Twitter: Rory Carroll - James Foley's fate horrifying. Didn't know him but he was one of us. Newsrooms should halt for a minute of silence.</noframe>
09.30 James Foley was an experienced correspondent who had covered the war in Libya before heading to Syria to follow the revolt against Bashar al-Assad's regime, contributing to news site GlobalPost, Agence France-Presse (AFP) and other media outlets.
AFP chairman Emmanuel Hoog described Foley "as a brave, independent and impartial journalist" whose work in Syria and other war zones was "widely admired".
09.00 The US-based Committee to Protect Journalists estimates that approximately 20 journalists, both local and international, are currently missing in Syria. Many of them are believed to be held by Islamic State.
The barbaric
murder of journalist James Foley, kidnapped in Syria and held almost two years,
sickens all decent people. Foley went to Syria to show the plight of the Syrian
people, to bear witness to their fight, and in so doing to fight for press
freedom," said CPJ Chairman Sandra Mims Rowe. "Our hearts go out to
his family, who had dedicated themselves to finding and freeing Jim." 08.45 On a Facebook page for Foley, a message from his mother Diane Foley said: "We have never been prouder of our son Jim. He gave his life trying to expose the world to the suffering of the Syrian people.
"We implore the kidnappers to spare the lives of the remaining hostages. Like Jim, they are innocents. They have no control over American government policy in Iraq, Syria or anywhere in the world."
08.30 Good morning and welcome to our latest coverage of the Iraq crisis. Late on Tuesday night, the Islamic State, an extremist militant group, posted a video showing the apparent murder of American journalist James Foley, who has been missing since he was seized in Syria in November 2012.
Intelligence agencies are trying to identify the killer of American journalist James Foley after he spoke with what appeared to be an English accent.
In the video the masked man points a knife at the camera with his left hand and says: "This is James Wright Foley, an American citizen, of your country. As a government, you have been at the forefront of the aggression towards the Islamic State."
The man also issued a threat to US President Barack Obama that a second US journalist, Time magazine contributor Steven Sotloff, missing since last August, would be killed unless air strikes cease. He said: "The life of this American citizen, Obama, depends on your next decision."
A US official told the Associated Press the video appeared to be authentic.
US President Barack Obama has held back from making a public statement about the beheading until the video can be formally authenticated.
"If genuine, we are appalled by the brutal murder of an innocent American journalist and we express our deepest condolences to his family and friends," White House National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said in a statement.
In other Iraq developments, Kurdish and Iraqi troops are attempting to ram home their advantage against the Islamic State after the recapture of the strategically important Mosul Dam. Ruth Sherlock and Carol Malouf have filed a dispatch from the dam which provides water and electricity to hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in the region.
Yesterday Iraqi forces also launched an offensive to drive Islamic State fighters out of Tikrit, the hometown of executed dictator Saddam
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