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New Strikes: US-Arab Alliance Aims for ISIS Wallet

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Warplanes from the U.S., Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have struck again in Syria, this time hitting a dozen Islamic State-controlled oil facilities. The mobile refineries generate $2 million a day for the ISIS jihadists.

Human rights activists say the latest air assault killed 14 militants and five women and children.

Speaking before the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday, President Barack Obama vowed to work with a broad coalition to take ISIS down, hoping that Britain will soon join the air strikes.

"The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force," Obama told the assembly. 
   
The president emphasized that the U.S. will not send in troops, but will support Iraqis and Syrians fighting to take back their communities.

"We will use our military might in a campaign of airstrikes to roll back ISIL," Obama said. "We will train and equip forces fighting against these terrorists on the ground.  We will work to cut off their financing and the flow of fighters in and out of the region."
   
The president presided over a U.S. Security Council session on Wednesday where world leaders moved quickly against ISIS.
  
A new resolution requires nations to track suspected terrorist fighters, prosecute those who travel for training, and share airline passenger information.
   
Meanwhile, U.S. leaders are highlighting an earlier airstrike this week they say disrupted an imminent plot to blow up American passenger jets by the al Qaeda-linked Khorasan terror group.

***How much do authorities know about Khorasan and why are they suddenly being called the greatest threat? CBN News' Erick Stakelbeck addressed that question and more on The 700 Club, Sept. 25.

"We had good information, specific information that they were nearing the end of planning and preparations for an attack on Western targets, either in Europe or the U.S. homeland -- that wasn't necessarily all clear -- but we knew that they were getting very, very close," Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said.
   
Officials say the group was developing explosives that could not be detected by airport screening machines.

"They had a plan in place, people to do it and explosives to execute it," Seth Jones, a counterterrorism analyst at the Rand Corp., said.
    
Meanwhile, ISIS-linked Algerian jihadists released video showing the "revenge" beheading of 55-year-old French mountain guide Hervé Gourdel.
   
In the video, the radicals denounced France for refusing to stop airstrikes in Iraq.
    
"This is why the Caliphate Soldiers in Algeria have decided to punish France, by executing this man, and to defend our beloved Islamic State," one of the jihadists says.

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About The Author

Heather
Sells

Heather Sells covers wide-ranging stories for CBN News that include religious liberty, ministry trends, immigration, and education. She’s known for telling personal stories that capture the issues of the day, from the border sheriff who rescues migrants in the desert to the parents struggling with a child that identifies as transgender. In the last year, she has reported on immigration at the Texas border, from Washington, D.C., in advance of the Dobbs abortion case, at crisis pregnancy centers in Massachusetts, and on sexual abuse reform at the annual Southern Baptist meeting in Anaheim