IS 'behead' Kurdish fighter

The video, titled "A message in blood to the leaders of the American-Kurdish alliance," shows 15 masked gunmen standing around an "Islamic State" (IS) flag as well as alleged Kurdish captives wearing orange outfits.

Three of the men ask Kurdish regional president Massoud Barzani "and the Kurdish government to end their relationship with the US...," the SITE Intelligence Group monitoring service said on Friday.

The video then shows the captive being beheaded by the masked gunmen.

The video follows another released by IS showing the beheading of US journalist James Foley and threatening another kidnapped reporter, Steven Sotloff, with the same fate if US air strikes in Iraq are not halted.

US strategy unclear

Although the US has launched airstrikes on Iraq to fight IS, US President Barack Obama admitted on Thursday that his administration does not "have a strategy yet" to fight IS in Syria. IS fighters have been waging war in both countries, having declared a caliphate across parts of both Iraq and Syria.

The US president said he would dispatch Secretary of State John Kerry to the Middle East soon to discuss the matter with regional partners. Obama will also meet world leaders in Cardiff, Wales next week during a NATO summit.

Meanwhile, at a conference in Bali, Indonesia, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Friday slammed the "brutal killings of civilians" by IS jihadists, saying the Sunni radical group was tearing apart whole communities.

Earlier this week, UN rights chief Navi Pillay said that persecution of minority groups in Iraq by IS amounted to crimes against against humanity.

ng/hc (AFP, dpa)