Despite U.N. focus and U.S. strikes, Islamic State said to advance in Syria

U.S. planes pounded Islamic State positions in Syria for a second day on Wednesday, but the strikes did not halt the fighters’ advance in a Kurdish area where fleeing refugees told of villages burnt and captives beheaded. President Barack Obama, speaking at the United Nations, asked the world to join together to fight the militants and vowed to keep up military pressure against them.

The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force, so the United States of America will work with a broad coalition to dismantle this network of death.

President Barack Obama

Washington and its Arab allies killed scores of IS fighters in the opening 24 hours of airstrikes, the first direct U.S. foray into Syria two weeks after Obama pledged to hit the group on both sides of the Iraq-Syria border. Obama led the U.N. Security Council in unanimously approving a binding resolution that requires all countries to pass laws and make it a serious crime for their citizens to join extremist groups such as IS and al-Nusra Front. Obama also took on Russia in his remarks, accusing Moscow of sending arms to pro-Kremlin separatists and refusing to allow access to the site of a downed civilian airliner, and then moving its own troops across the border with Ukraine.

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