Warplanes flying from the USS George HW Bush carried out the first US air-strikes against ISIS targets in Syria, with planes from five Arab countries also participating in the raids.
Turkish security forces fired water cannon and tear-gas to prevent local Kurds from crossing into Syria to come to the defense of ISIS-beseiged Kobani.
The Kurdish town of Kobani is holding out against a dramatic ISIS advance into Syrian territory, and local leaders are calling for a pan-Kurdish mobilization for the town's defense.
ISIS militants destroyed the Citadel of Tikrit, birthplace of Saladin and one of Iraq's most important archeological sites. The jihadists meanwhile seized several Syrian towns.
Indigenous resistance forces on the ground are fighting ISIS—but receive no solidarity from "progressives" in the West who make the question entirely about the US role.
If Washington is perceived as leading an alliance that includes Iran and Hezbollah, this will augment the propaganda assistance loaned to ISIS with every US missile that falls.
The Obama administration is preparing to carry out a campaign against ISIS that may take three years to complete, involving a coalition of some 40 countries.
Despite Tehran's denials, reports mount from northern Iraq that Revolutionary Guards have been sent into battle against ISIS, and an Iranian drone crashed in a Kurdish village.
ISIS fighters massacred 700 Turkmen civilians—including women, children and the elderly—in a northern Iraqi village last month, a UNICEF official reports.
ISIS posted videos online of Syrian and Kurdish troops being beheaded, while Nusra Front seized 43 UN peacekeepers near the Israeli line in the Golan Heights.
Thousands of Yazidi refugees who have fled the Sinjar region of northern Iraq have been denied entry into Turkey by military forces, and are stranded in the mountains.
A wave of terror blasts, including at a Shi'ite mosque, left 35 dead across Iraq, as the Pentagon prepares surveillance flights over ISIS territory in Syria.
