Live Blog: War against Islamic State

UK Prime Minister David Cameron, speaking at the UN, said that there must be renewed efforts to stop young people joining extremist groups.

He said that up to 500 Britons had joined Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.

Channel 4 News today reported that up to five Britons have already been killed by US-led airstrikes in Syria.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is speaking to reporters in New York, after meeting today with politicians including the UK Prime Minister. Heads of state from the two countries have not engaged in direct talks since 1979.

He told reporters at a press conference that the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 fuelled "the bitter phenomenon" of IS.

Rouhani said that if Iran had not taken action to check IS, action it publicly acknowledged earlier today, there is "no doubt" that the group would now hold sway in southern Baghdad.

He slammed the US's tactic of arming Syrian rebels it deems moderate, like the Free Syrian Army - Rouhani warned that such steps would be akin to the arming of "another group of terrorists."

"The Americans themselves announced they want to train another group of terrorists and send it to Syria to fight."

The Gulf Centre for Human Rights today expressed its "utmost sorrow and grief" at the killing by IS militants in Mosul of Samira Saleh al-Naimi, a prominent lawyer and human rights defender.

According to the centre's report, she was executed in a public square in the town, which has been under IS control for weeks.

Last week she was taken from her home by militants, after she publicly described IS's activities in Mosul as "barbaric."

The UN Security Council has called on all nations to move to prevent the movement of militant groups by implementing security effective security procedures on their borders and tightening the controls on the issuing of identity documents and travel papers.

English-language Kurdish newspaper Slemani Times, based in Iraqi Kurdistan, reports that Islamic State fighters are now under one kilometre away from the Kurdish border town of Kobane (known as Ayn al-Arab in Arabic).

The UN refugee agency said on Tuesday that it is making contingency plans in case the entire population of the town, 400,000 people, flee in the face of the IS advance, as well as the airstrikes that could target the area.

Many have already fled, although it is unclear how many people remain in the town.

A spokesperson for Turkey's Kurdish Regional Government, Safeen Dizayee, said on Wednesday night that "there should be more of an effort to avert what is becoming a humanitarian catastrophe" in the town.

The Council of Muthanna Province in Iraq, a far south-western district that shares a border with Saudi Arabia, warns that it could pull all of its troops out of battles against IS further north within 72 hours.

According to a statement just released, the council said that it fears a repeat of "massacres" committed in Mosul, Salah al-Din and Diyala provinces.

It said that unless measures are taken within 72 hours to reassess the army's military strategy, it will demand that all troops from the province leave battles in those provinces.

The statement comes after the grisly events in Saqlawiyah in Anbar province last week, when Iraqi officials said that 300 Iraqi soldiers had been killed in a poison chlorine attack. 

As the statement highlighted difficulties the Iraqi army is facing, Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi said he had got guarantees from US President Obama that he would arm Iraqi forces.

Earlier in the day, Abadi had directly asked UK Prime Minister David Cameron to launch airstrikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq.

Iraqi requests for outside assistance came on the back of the first official acknowledgement from Tehran that the leader of the Iranian elite revolutionary guard force, al-Quds, had been on the ground in the Iraqi Kurdistan capital of Erbil.

The UN Security Council has unanimously passed a resolution presented by US President Barack Obama to make it a serious criminal offence for their nationals to travel abroad and fight with militant groups.

Obama is currently speaking at the UN Security Council meeting in New York.

"If there was ever a challenge in our inter-connected world that cannot be faced by one nation alone, it is this."

Jonathan Steele, reporting for MEE from Damascus, indicates that the celebratory tone of pro-Assad newspaper al-Watan is not shared by ordinary Damascenes.

Abu Nouri, a trader in a Damascus souq, told him that he is not confident about the success of the strikes.

"We thought of Americans as people of technology and civilisation, but they shake hands with Saudis who send terrorists against us.”

Read the full story here.

The Algerian government has condemned in the country of French hostage Hevre Gourdel by militants from Jund al-Khilafa.

In a statement, they dubbed the killing, described by French President Francois Hollande as an "assassination", an "act of cowardice."

The European Union also condemned Gourdel's murder on Wednesday evening.

French President Francois Hollande used his speech at the UN General Assembly to mourn the French hostage Herve Gourdel, whose death at the hands of IS-affiliated militants in Algeria he confirmed today.

He remained strident in his support for the anti-IS airstrikes in which France is participating.

"Power is the only way to stop IS terror."

He also said that now is not the time for "cowardly behaviour" from France: it is "in a state of war."

There have been reports throughout the day that Islamic State militants are aiming to gain full control of Ayn al-Arab, the border town between Syria and Turkey known in Kurdish as Kobane.

Hundreds of thousands of Kurds have already fled the town, though many faced difficulties crossing the border into Turkey as Turkish security forces upped security at the border.

In an indication that Islamic State militants are advancing towards the town, which lies just inside the border in far north-central Syria, there are now reports that their fighters are attempting to take control of Shiran village, five kilometres south of Kobane.

Elijah Magnier, correspondent from al-Rai, reported earlier in the day that IS had been able to seize control of a village near Kobane despite several US airstrikes.

World leaders have been holding forth on their views on intervention against Islamic State and other groups in Syria at a UN conference in New York today.

However, the opinions of Syrians regarding the bombings have been less prominent. 

As the residents of Raqqa complain that their communications with the outside world were completely cut off by an airstrike targeting a communications tower, we link to a piece in Dissent Magazine that gives the views of Syrian intellectuals and activists.

In the piece, Iyas Kadouni, former director of the Centre for Civil Society and Democracy, expressed doubts as to whether the campaign could be successful "without adequate analysis of the reasons for the group's rise."

US officials have just confirmed that a Jordanian plane participated in strikes in Syria today.

Jordan's King Abdullah is currently speaking at the UN General Assembly in New York.

Abdullah said that "global power" would be achievable if the countries of the United Nations were "as one."

Speaking at the UN General Assembly in New York, Qatar's leader Al al-Thani said that "many areas of the world are suffering from terror."

Accusing President Bashar al-Assad of Syria of committing "crimes against humanity" in Syria, he said that the international community had failed to provide aid to the Syrian population swiftly enough.

Egypt's President Sisi is now speaking. 

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Sergei Ryabkov, told reporters on Wednesday that Russia will be participating in conversations at the UN General Assembly on Wednesday to discuss a draft decision on confronting terror.

Russia's Foreign Ministry on Tuesday released a scathing statement criticising the US-led airstrikes that aim to root out Islamic State militants, saying they would lead to further destabilisation in Syria.