ISIL threatens to strike US targets around globe

In an online video, the terrorist group that has seized large parts of Iraq says it will attack Americans in any place if US airstrikes hit them.
 
The recently uploaded video shows a photograph of a US citizen who was beheaded during the US occupation of Iraq in 2011 and victims of snipers.
 
It also features a statement that reads: "We will drown all of you in blood."
 
The warning comes as Washington is helping Kurdish Peshmerga forces recapture territories captured by militants.
 
On Sunday, US forces carried out several airstrikes near Erbil and Mosul.
 
ISIL, which controls parts of Syria, sent its fighters into neighboring Iraq in June and quickly seized large swaths of territory straddling the border between the two countries.
 
On Thursday, US counterterrorism officials told reporters that new strategies are urgently needed to counter the surging ISIL threat.
 
“We’re seeing an expansion of its external terrorist ambitions,” one US counterterrorism official said. “As its capabilities grow, it has attracted thousands of foreign extremists — some of whom are going home to start cells. As it carves out territory [in Iraq], it wants to go beyond that and do attacks outside.”
 
In an interview, American antiwar activist Rick Rozoff said that US counterterrorism officials’ claim is a “dishonest and disingenuous ploy” to justify the military intervention in Iraq.
 
“This is a sleight of hand on the part of the White House in the first place that has been used over the past decades to justify the US military intervention/the US aggression,” Rozoff said.