WORLD POLITICS

NETWORK OF DEATH: ''OBAMA WE MUST DESTROY THE NETWORK OF DEATH''

As fresh airstrikes are launched on Islamic State, the US President warns the militants to "leave the battlefield while they can".

US President Barack Obama has called on the world to join together to destroy the Islamic State, which he branded a "network of death".

Addressing the United Nations, he vowed to keep up the pressure on the militants, warning them to "leave the battlefield while they can".

He spoke a day after the US and five Arab allies opened their military operation in Syria against IS.

British Prime Minister David Cameron has recalled Parliament this Friday for a vote on possible UK airstrikes in Iraq.

The US President said IS must be 'degraded and destroyed'

President Obama said the US would never be at war with Islam, as he challenged Muslims in the Middle East to repudiate the ideology that has allowed groups like IS to flourish.

"Ultimately, the task of rejecting sectarianism and extremism is a generational task," he said, "a task for the people of the Middle East themselves.

"No external power can bring about a transformation of hearts and minds."

He said IS had gunned down innocent children and starved religious minorities to death.

Syrian Kurds watch clashes between their ethnic group and Islamic State

"No god condones this terror," he said. "No grievance justifies these actions.

"There can be no negotiation with this brand of evil. The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force."

Mr Obama invited the rest of the world to join more than 40 nations said to have already offered to join the US-led coalition.

The American military announced on Wednesday it had launched five more airstrikes targeting IS: one in eastern Syria near the Iraqi border, two west of Baghdad and two southeast of Irbil.

The Assad regime carried out separate air raids on a rebel stronghold

The State Department's anti-jihad Twitter messaging arm, @ThinkAgain_DOS, tweeted graphic photos appearing to show dead bodies, apparently of IS fighters, being zipped into body bags after US airstrikes.

The first American raids on IS targets in Syria were launched on Tuesday, supported by Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Among the areas hit was the IS stronghold of Raqqa where it is thought British aid worker Alan Henning has been held hostage by the group.

The leader of an al Qaeda unit called Khorasan, which the US says was plotting imminent attacks against the West, died in the opening salvo, an American official told Reuters.

Fresh US airstrikes have been launched against IS targets

The US also struck al Qaeda's main Syria branch, known as the Nusra Front.

Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby told Sky News the airstrikes have already hampered the ability of insurgents to plan attacks on the US and Europe.

The US President has said the campaign against IS, which is declaring a "caliphate" in swathes of Syria and Iraq, could last years.

Syrian President Bashar al Assad has not objected to the US-led raids against the Islamist insurgents. 

His forces reportedly carried out their own airstrikes on Wednesday against a rebel bastion in the south of the country.