IS poses 'immediate' threat to Europe, says US

Top US intelligence officials said Friday that Islamic State militants fighting in Iraq and Syria pose an "immediate" threat to Europe as a significant number carried European passports.

The danger presented by militants potentially returning to the West to carry out attacks has prompted more cooperation between US and European intelligence agencies in a bid to track terror suspects, the officials said.

Matthew Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, suggested IS militants presented a more serious danger for European states than for America, given the number of recruits from EU countries.

"The threat is quite immediate for Europe," Olsen told reporters.

"They see it really as right on their doorstep."

Olsen's deputy, Nicholas Rasmussen, told the same briefing Friday that information sharing about terror suspects between Washington and its European partners has dramatically improved since the IS threat emerged in recent months.

US requests for information that would have met with some delays or resistance more than a year ago are now quickly acted on, Rasmussen said.

"We are pushing on an open door as opposed to cajoling and begging for information," Rasmussen said.

European governments are "much more willing to share that kind of information," he said.

The US government has used different acronyms and names for the group, including ISIL or ISIS, but Olsen said he did not expect Washington to refer to the extremists as the "Islamic State," as it could play into their propaganda.

"I don't think we will call them 'Islamic State.' It gives them a degree of credibility" that they do not deserve, he said.

Meanwhile, the UN's new human rights chief said Monday that IS jihadist militants are intent upon creating "a house of blood".

Its actions "reveal only what a Takfiri (extremist) state would look like, should this movement actually try to govern in the future," Jordanian prince and diplomat Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein told the UN Human Rights Council.

"It would be a harsh, mean-spirited house of blood."