The U.S. also is focusing on efforts to find and kill Islamic State’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who has gone into hiding, an Obama administration official said.
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Police in London said they were treating a stabbing on Saturday as a terrorist incident after a man wielding a knife slashed another, screaming according to British media “this is for Syria”.
He said there were no reports of any civilian casualties. Since Moscow began their campaign, Syrian troops were able to capture areas from the extremist group.
IS controls large stretches of territory in the two countries, which it describes as an Islamic “caliphate”.
Its operations have expanded further in recent days, partly in response to the deadly attacks in Paris claimed by IS.
Also Friday, President François Hollande visited France’s aircraft carrier off the coast of Syria and German lawmakers approved joining the intensifying fight against ISIS jihadists.
Four Tornado jets launched the first air strikes on Thursday, hitting the Omar oil fields in eastern Syria.
Speaking about the British airstrikes, Assad said that they are “harmful and illegal”, adding that it “will support terrorism as what happened after the coalition started its operation”.
“Terror”, he said, was like a cancer which needed to be tackled with a comprehensive strategy and that would involve working with troops on the ground. You can not cut the cancer. “If you were to remove the support these groups get from various countries in our region and the West in general, it would take a matter of months to achieve our mission”, he said, referring to the regime’s early attempts to quash a popular uprising against it. “That will make it spread in the body faster”. “So I would say they don’t have the will and don’t have the vision on how to defeat terrorism”. The government of Russian President Vladimir Putin is Assad’s strongest ally and the two have joined forces on the ground to obliterate Islamic State.
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IS accused the activist of “collaborating with the Crusader coalition” after discovering broadcasting equipment during a raid on his home, the Observatory said.
