And he said: “We’re taking this extremely seriously”.
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“I’ve been wrestling with this thing now for a lot of years”, he said.
Obama said Thursday the terror threat to the homeland is serious, because of the lone actors or small cells that can become radicalized on the internet and carry out attacks on the Islamic State’s behalf.
Agence France Presse quoted Obama as saying that the US -led coalition would continue to aggressively target the jihadists “across every front”. The Libya strikes signal an expansion of the fight against the Islamic State, which is also known as ISIL.
Mr Obama gave a press briefing in Washington after meeting top military and security officials at the Pentagon.
Thursday’s attack destroyed a pickup truck with a recoilless rifle, a gun that fires artillery rounds, according to the Pentagon.
An AV-8B Harrier, attached to Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 264, takes off from the flight deck of the amphibious assault ship USS Wasp (LHD 1) to conduct strike missions against ISIS targets in Sirte, Libya, Aug. 1, 2016.
This week, a Syrian rescue service operating in rebel-held territory said a helicopter dropped containers of toxic gas overnight on a town close to where a Russian military helicopter had been shot down hours earlier.
But, speaking after a security briefing at the Pentagon on Thursday, he waned of the risks of attacks overseas by the group, as it shifts strategy faced with defeat in Iraq and Syria.
Russian bombing of USA trained groups in Syria has also dramatically undermined Washington’s moral and military standing. High on the agenda: the nascent US air campaign against IS targets in Libya. They have taken key territory from ISIL and are preparing campaigns against ISIL in Mosul.
In the fight against the Islamic State, U.S. -backed Iraqi and Syrian forces have recaptured significant portions of their countries from the terrorist group, attempting to isolate them in their strongholds of Mosul and Raqqa.
“If we are able to get a genuine cessation of hostilities that prevents indiscriminate bombing, that protects civilians, that allows humanitarian access and creates some sort of pathway to begin the hard work of political negotiations inside of Syria, then we have to try because the alternative is a perpetuation of civil war”.
“It is deplorable and the depravity of the Syrian regime has rightly earned the condemnation of the world”, he said.
The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for a number of recent mass killings, including the Bastille Day attack in Nice, France, last month that left more than 80 dead, and the Orlando nightclub shootings that killed 49.
Obama also talked about the transmission of the mosquito-borne Zika virus in the United States.
Though he didn’t name Trump, it was clear he was addressing the Republican nominee who has said he would “bomb the shit out of them (the IS)”, and has proposed denying entry into the United States for immigrants from areas of the world “compromised” by terrorism.
More cases are expected, he added, but a major outbreak is unlikely. But the complications for pregnant women and their children can be severe.
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Eyeing a looming humanitarian catastrophe in Aleppo – the besieged northwestern city of 250,000 people that was once Syria’s commercial hub – Obama said it was “time for Russian Federation to show that it is serious” about bringing peace. The payment, he said, was announced by the White House in January, and this “was not some nefarious deal”.
