PARIS Several Arab states have offered to conduct airstrikes against militants in Iraq alongside the efforts of the United States U.S. officials said Sunday as the Obama administration sought to bolster its case for action against the Islamic State.
A lot of this is still in the discussion phase but I want to be clear that there have been offers both to Centcom and to the Iraqis of Arab countries taking more aggressive kinetic action against ISIL" including airstrikes a senior State Department official said in Paris using an alternative acronym for the militant network.
The military side of the widening campaign against the Islamic State is being coordinated by the U.S. Central Command or Centcom. U.S. officials would not identify which nations made offers of active battlefield participation or kinetic action" in military parlance.
Meanwhile British Prime Minister David Cameron on Sunday condemned the despicable"
killing of British aid worker David Haines by Islamic State extremists and vowed to do everything possible to hunt down his killers and bring them to justice.
Step by step we will drive back dismantle and ultimately destroy ISIL and what it stands for. We will do so in a calm deliberate way but with an iron determination" Cameron said in a televised statement.
Cameron who led an emergency government meeting Sunday to discuss the killing said the country was sickened" that a Briton could have done this to a fellow Briton.
Islamic State militants on Saturday released a video showing Haines being executed in the same grisly manner as two American journalists in recent weeks along with a threat to kill another British hostage Alan Henning.
