LATEST: Activist — Protests Against Merchants in Insurgent-Controlled Douma Near Damascus, 11 Wounded

SUNDAY FEATURE

Islamic State Beheads US Hostage Peter Kassig & Syrian Troops

UPDATE 0730 GMT: President Obama has repeated his desire not to send US combat troops to fight the Islamic State, but said there are always circumstances where ground forces might have to be deployed.

Obama cited a hypothetical example in which jihadists obtain a nuclear weapon.

“So the question just ends up being, what are those circumstances?” he said in a news conference during his week-long trip to Asia and Australia.

Obama said of remarks by General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that troop deployments were under consideration: “That’s his job — to think about various contingencies.”

On another front, Obama rejected cooperation with the Syrian regime against the the Islamic State:

[President] Assad has ruthlessly murdered hundreds of thousands of his citizens.

As a consequence, he has completely lost legitimacy with the majority of the country.

For us to then make common cause with him against ISIL [the Islamic State] would only turn more Sunnis in Syria in the direction of supporting ISIL and would weaken our coalition.

The Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, has visited American troops in Baghdad with the message that the campaign in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State could last several years.

The US stepped up its involvement in Iraq last week with an order from President Obama doubling US military advisors and special forces to almost 3,000. Dempsey then indicated that the US troops could provide “close support” on the ground to Iraqi forces fighting the jihadists.

The General told US troops that American intervention had helped “pull Iraq back from the precipice” after the Islamic State’s offensive captured key cities, including the second city Mosul and Tikrit, and advanced on Baghdad in June.

“Now, I think it’s starting to turn. So well done,” he told the Marines at the US Embassy in Baghdad. The US had achieved the crucial aim of showing the Islamic Staet was not an unstoppable, 10-foot-tall force but “a bunch of midgets running around with a really radical ideology”.

However, he said the US mission and building trust in Iraq would take time.

“How long? Several years,” he said.

Activist: Protests Against Merchants in Insurgent-Controlled Douma Near Damascus, 11 Wounded

A local activist has said that residents of Douma, northeast of Damascus, protested on Saturday against merchants over high food prices.

Mohammed Orabi said the residents attacked storage units, with 11 people wounded in clashes with guards.

The activist said that there is tension with insurgents over the food issue, “People are angry with the Islamic Army because they back the merchants. People want the prices to go down.”

“The fighting has been ongoing since yesterday,” he added saying that at least 11 people have been wounded.

Claimed video of a protest:

Insurgents Continue Advance in Daraa Province in South, Take Village of Dilli

Insurgents move into the village of Dilli (see map) in Daraa Province in southern Syria:

The opposition fighters have had a series of victories this month in the area, taking control of the towns of Nawa and Sheikh Maskin. They are threatening to cut off Damascus from the south of the country and the Jordanian border.

Dilli is just to the north of Sheikh Maskin on the main route from the capital to the south.