Live Blog: War against Islamic State

Fox News has confirmed that airstrikes carried out by the United Arab Emirates were led by the UAE's first female pilot, Mariam al-Mansouri.

Fox News correspondent Jennifer Griffin dubbed the pilot #ladyliberty, while Atlantic correspondent Jeffrey Goldberg said Mansouri was "dropping bombs on ISIS misogynists."

The United States Embassy in Jordan, based in the capital Amman, has warned its staff to be vigilant in case of any reprisal attacks launched as the US and Jordan co-ordinate airstrikes in Syria.

In May, a Jordanian court handed down sentences of at least 20 years for 11 individuals who had plotted to blow up the embassy. 

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has defended French participation in anti-IS airstrikes on Wednesday, after news of the death of French hostage Herve Gourdel.

France has been participating in the US-led strikes, and Algerian militant group Jund al-Khilafa on Monday threatened to kill Gourdel within 24 hours unless France halted the strikes.

Jund al-Khilafa, a militant group based in Algeria, has claimed the beheading of a French hostage, Herve Gourdel.

The group had reportedly given a 24-hour deadline for the halting of airstrikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.

The news was reported by SITE Intelligence group, a site dedicated to monitoring "the jihadi threat."

Coalition strikes against militants in Syria have been continuing throughout the day on Wednesday. There are reports that communications are down in Raqqa, the IS stronghold, after coalition strikes targeted a communications tower.

Meanwhile forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have also been targeting the group in the north of the country.

Translation: Reuters: Syrian government forces strike IS headquarters in the north of the country.

The full text of the speech is already available here.

A few reactions from Twitter so far below:

He said that, by next year, all UN member states should announce the steps they have taken to combat domestic extremism.

3 - "We must address the cycle...of sectarian conflict."

"Violence within Muslim communities" has become the source of the current misery, and Obama demanded that local leaders denounce sectarian strife.

He praised the "inclusive" new government in Iraq, which he said had come dangerously close to returning to "the abyss."

He said the US is training and equipping rebels in Syria - a key US-backed rebel group yesterday spoke out against the airstrikes.

He promised that the US will "remain engaged" in the region.

4 - The Arab world must work to engage their young communities.

Addressing young people across the Muslim world, he said that they inherit a tradition that stands for "education, not ignorance."

He said that a choice between "the dictates of the state" and joining extremist groups is no choice at all.

He said "the US will be a peaceful and constructive partner", which will take action against threats to the security of its allies, without giving further details as to what might be considered a threat or who exactly the US's allies are.

He said the landscape in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict appears "bleak", though he claimed that the struggle has been used as "an excuse" for years to distract from domestic problems of countries in the region.

"The status quo in Gaza and the West Bank is not sustainable."

In a speech dominated by rhetoric 

He said there is no "us and them" when it comes to the fight against Islamist extremism.

Quoting an infamous 2003 essay by Samuel Hungtington, he rejected any suggestion of a "clash of civilisations" between the West and the Arab world.

He mentioned high rates of unemployment in the Middle East, and outlines four key steps towards fighting "religiously-motivated" extremism.

1 - IS must be "degraded and ultimately destroyed." He said "the only language understood by killers like this" is the language of violence. 

Obama rejected any suggestion that US troops would set foot on the ground, saying instead that the US would "support" local fighters.

2 - He called on the world, and "especially Muslims" to publicly denounce IS ideology. He demanded a crackdown on ideological propaganda published on the internet and social media. He quoted a commandment from the Christian Bible: "do unto your neighbour as you would have him do unto you."

"We must declare war upon war"

The numbers of Kurdish refugees fleeing into Turkey to escape the advance of Islamic State jihadists in northern Syria has slowed considerably over the last few days, Turkish officials said on Wednesday.

Some 140,000 mainly Kurdish refugees have now crossed the border into Turkey after the militants moved on the town of Ain al-Arab, known as Kobane to Kurds, late last week.

But after the flight of tens of thousands over the weekend triggered fears of a new refugee crisis, with Turkey already hosting some Syrian 1.5 million refugees from the three-and-a-half year conflict, the flow has now steadied.

On Wednesday a few hundred Syrians, mainly women, children and the elderly, were making their way across the only border crossing still open to refugees in Yumurtalik in southern Turkey.

"We are not expecting anything more today. The rhythm has considerably dropped," a Turkish official, who asked not to be named, told AFP. 

US-led air strikes against IS targets in Syria just over the border did not appear to have prompted a new wave of refugees, the source said.

"We are not anticipating any new wave of refugees for the moment," said the official, adding: "We think that most of the Syrians who wanted to leave the country have already done so." 

France's prime minister vowed to continue its military action in Iraq until the local army can gain the upper hand against Islamic State militants surging through the country.

"This military commitment has taken the form of aerial operations over Iraqi territory. We will not however deploy French ground troops. We will stay committed however for as long as is needed for the Iraqi army to gain the upper hand over Daesh," Manuel Valls told French MPs, using an alternative name for the Islamic State group.

Islamist leaders in Jordan have criticised their country's participation in a US-led air offensive against the Islamic State in Syria after the military confirmed it had carried out airstrikes on Tuesday against the militant group.

"These strikes should have been directed at the Jews, who just pounded Gaza and killed its people," Jordanian salafist leader Mohamed al-Shalabi told Anadolu Agency.

Describing the anti-IS campaign as "a new crusade," al-Shalabi asserted that it was "haram" (religiously prohibited) for Muslims to join the offensive.

"These are Western agendas that aim to undermine Islam," he said.

Zaki Bani Arshid, deputy leader of Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood, for his part, reiterated his group's rejection of Jordan's participation in the campaign.

"This is not our war; we aren't interested in fighting on others' behalf," he told AA.

The Pentagon has issued a point-by-point illustrated summary of US-led air strikes on Islamic State forces in Syria.

Lieutenant General William Mayville Jr, the senior operations officer of the US joint chiefs of staff, says the strikes were the start of a credible and sustainable persistent campaign to degrade, and ultimately destroy IS.

Al-Qaeda's Syrian branch, Al-Nusra Front, said Wednesday that it is evacuating its bases and positions in the northeastern province of Idlib, a day after US-led strikes were launched against militants.

Ahrar al-Sham, a key Islamist rebel group allied with Nusra, was also evacuating its positions in the region, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.

On Twitter, Nusra said it had "evacuated the majority" of it bases near residential areas.

"Thousands of fighters from Al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham have evacuated their bases in Idlib province," the Observatory said.

The Britain-based group, which relies on a network of activists and other sources on the ground, said Ahrar al-Sham had also urged "civilians to keep their distance from bases" belonging to it.

The leader of Hezbollah said on Tuesday his Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim group opposed US-led air strikes on Syria and added they won't cooperate with the US in fight against self-proclaimed Islamic State.

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, whose group has been helping Syria's President Bashar al-Assad fight a Sunni-dominated insurgency, spoke after strikes against IS and other groups in Lebanon's neighbor Syria.

"We are against American military intervention and an international coalition in Syria, whether that (action) is against the regime or IS," Nasrallah said in a speech aired on Hezbollah-run al-Manar television.

Nasrallah also said that the US was the 'root of terrorism' in the world, implying the basis of their reaction towards the US.

Umit Yasar Toprak, a Turkish national from the city of Bursa who had left his family and gone to Syria two months ago to join the al-Nusra Front, was killed in the first round of the US-led air strikes, reported the Turkish daily Today's Zaman.

According to media reports, Toprak, who went by a codename of Ebu Yusuf el Turki, left his wife and five children in Bursa to join the al-Qaeda-affiliated group in Syria about two months ago. 

His family refused to comment on his alleged death.