President Obama Condemns US Journalist's Beheading

President Barack Obama on Wednesday condemned the Islamic State militant group that beheaded an American journalist as a spreading "cancer" that must be eradicated.

"The entire world is appalled by the brutal murder of James Foley," Obama said, speaking a day after the militants released a video of Foley's execution. Obama vowed the United States "will continue to do what we must do to protect our people."

Earlier Wednesday, U.S. intelligence officials confirmed the authenticity of the grisly video, which shows the freelance journalist being put to death. It also showed a second American journalist being held hostage, Steven Joel Sotloff, and included militants' threats to kill him.
 
The Sunni extremist group claimed it had killed Foley in retaliation for U.S. airstrikes targeting the group’s fighters in northern Iraq. The strikes, which began Aug. 8, helped rescue thousands of Yazidi refugees trapped on Mount Sinjar and helped Iraqis regain control of the country's main dam, near Mosul. In the hours after the video's release, the U.S. said it carried out nearly a dozen more airstrikes near the dam.

The 40-year-old Foley disappeared November 22, 2012, after being abducted in Syria by unidentified gunmen. He had reported in the Middle East for five years, for organizations including GlobalPost, and previously had spent six weeks in captivity in Libya.

SOURCE: VOANews