Jihadists claim beheading of US journalist

In the nearly five-minute video, titled “A Message to America” and distributed online by known Islamic State sources, the group declares that Foley was killed after Obama ordered air strikes against IS positions in northern Iraq.

The purported execution is carried out in an open desert area with no immediate signs as to whether it is in Iraq or Syria by a black-clad masked militant who speaks English with a British accent.

Foley is seen kneeling on the ground, wearing an orange outfit that resembles those worn by prisoners held at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay.

“Any aggression towards the Islamic State is an aggression towards Muslims from all walks of life who have accepted the Islamic caliphate as their leadership,” the masked militant declares.

Formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the hardline IS declared itself a caliphate — a successor state to historic Muslim empires — in June this year.

Formed by a mixture of former Sunni insurgents who fought US and Shiite-led government forces in Iraq and anti-regime rebels in Syria, it has attracted recruits from around the world.

In recent weeks it has laid claim to a wide swathe of eastern Syria and northern Iraq, seizing the major Iraqi city of Mosul and threatening to advance on Kurdish territory and south towards Baghdad.

Earlier this month, Obama reacted by ordering US warplanes to strike IS positions and vehicles that threatened US facilities in the Kurdish capital Arbil or to kill refugees from religious minority groups.

This week, backed by US strikes, Kurdish and Iraqi forces dislodged IS fighters from a key dam north of Mosul, in the group’s first major battlefield reverse since it declared the caliphate.