US President Barack
Obama has vowed that his country will not be swayed from
airstrikes against the Islamic State (IS) group after it
beheaded an American journalist, an act he said was proof that
the fighters stand for no religion.
Obama's response on
Wednesday to the execution of James Foley marked his strongest
condemnation yet of IS fighters, and he gave no sign of a pause in
US targeting of its positions in Iraq.
The president's remarks
to reporters covering his vacation in Martha's
Vineyard, Massachusetts, came shortly after the White House
announced that a video showing the beheading of Foley had been authenticated
by the US intelligence community, the Reuters news agency reported.
Obama said he
had called Foley's family to express his condolences.
"The United States
of America will continue to do what we must do to protect our
people," Obama said.
"We will be vigilant
and we will be relentless. When people harm Americans, anywhere, we
do what's necessary to see that justice is done."
Obama said the fighters had rampaged across cities and
villages, abducted women and children and subjected them to torture
and rape and killed Muslims, both Sunni and Shia, by the thousands.
"No just God would
stand for what they did yesterday and what they do every single day," he
said. "Their ideology is bankrupt."
Cameron meeting
The video showing Foley's
killing featured a man speaking in what appeared to be a British accent.
Cameron will meet with
officials from the Home Office, Foreign Office and intelligence agencies.
"We have not
identified the individual responsible on the video but from what we've seen
it looks increasingly likely that it is a British citizen. Now this is
deeply shocking," Cameron said on Wednesday.
"Our intelligence
services will be looking very carefully on both sides of the Atlantic at
this video to establish its authenticity, to try to identify the
individual concerned and then we will work together to try to locate
him," UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond told British broadcaster,
Sky news, in a reference to the masked man.
Foley, 41, was
contributing videos to the AFP news agency for the media company GlobalPost
before he was kidnapped on November 22, 2012 by unidentified gunmen.
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