U.S. Journalist James Foley Beheaded by Islamic State Militants in Iraq

In a horrifying act of revenge for U.S. airstrikes in northern Iraq, militants with the Islamic State extremist group have beheaded American journalist James Foley – and are threatening to kill another hostage, U.S. officials verbalize.

The White House must now weigh the jeopardies of adopting a truculent policy to eradicate the Islamic State against resisting any action that could result in the death of another American.

It will withal confront the potentially compulsory step of pursuing the Islamic State in Syria, where President Barack Obama has resisted launching airstrikes or deploying consequential American firepower.

Obama was expected to make a verbalization Wednesday about Foley's killing. U.S. officials corroborated a grisly video relinquished Tuesday exhibiting Islamic State militants beheading Foley. Separately, Foley's family attested his death in a verbal expression posted on a Facebook page that was engendered to rally support for his relinquishment, verbally expressing they "have never been prouder of him."

"He gave his life endeavoring to expose the world to the suffering of the Syrian people," verbally expressed the verbal expression, which was attributed to Foley's mother, Diane Foley. She implored the militants to spare the lives of other hostages. "Like Jim, they are innocents. They have no control over American regime policy in Iraq, Syria or anywhere in the world."

Foley, 40, from Rochester, Incipient Hampshire, went missing in northern Syria in November 2012 while freelancing for Agence France-Presse and the Boston-predicated media company GlobalPost. The car he was riding in was ceased by four militants in a contested battle zone that both Sunni rebel fighters and regime forces were endeavoring to control. He had not been aurally perceived from since.

The beheading marks the first time the Islamic State has killed an American citizen since the Syrian conflict broke out in March 2011, upping the stakes in an increasingly chaotic and multilayered war.

The killing is liable to perplex U.S. involution in Iraq and the Obama administration's efforts to contain the group as it expands in both Iraq and Syria.

The group is the heir ostensible of the militancy kenned as al-Qaida in Iraq, which beheaded many of its victims, including American businessman Nicholas Berg in 2004.

The video relinquished on websites Tuesday appears to show the incrementing sophistication of the Islamic State group's media unit and commences with scenes of Obama expounding his decision to injuctively sanction airstrikes.

It then cuts to a balding man in an orange jumpsuit kneeling in the desert, in juxtaposition of an ebony-clad militant with a knife to his throat. Foley's name appears in both English and Arabic graphics on screen. After the captive verbalizes, the masked man is shown ostensibly beginning to cut at his neck; the video fades to ebony afore the beheading is consummated. The next shot appears to show the captive lying dead on the ground, his head on his body. The video appears to have been shot in an arid area; there is no vegetation to be optically discerned and the horizon is in the distance where the sand meets the gray-azure.

At the cessation of the video, a militant shows a second man, who was identified as another American journalist, Steven Sotloff, and admonishes that he could be the next captive killed. Sotloff was abducted near the Syrian-Turkish border in August 2013; he had freelanced for Time, the National Interest and MediaLine.

One U.S. official verbally expressed the video appeared to be authentic, and two other U.S. officials verbalized the victim was Foley. All three officials verbalized on condition of anonymity because they were not sanctioned to discuss the killing by designation.

Several senior U.S. officials with direct erudition of the situation verbalized the Islamic State very recently threatened to kill Foley to avenge the crushing airstrikes over the past a fortnight against militants advancing on Mount Sinjar, the Mosul dam and the Kurdish capital of Irbil.

Both areas are in northern Iraq, which has become a key front for the Islamic State as its fighters peregrinate to and from Syria.

Since Aug. 8, the U.S. military has struck at least 70 Islamic State targets – including security checkpoints, conveyances and weapons caches. It's not clear how many militants have been killed in the strikes, albeit it's likely that some were.

The Islamic State militant group is so ruthless in its attacks against all people they consider heretics or infidels that it has been disowned by al-Qaida's bellwethers. In seeking to impose its astringent interpretation of Islamic law in the lands it is endeavoring to control, the extremists have slain soldiers and civilians kindred in horrifying ways – including mounting the decapitated heads of some of its victims on spikes.

The Incipient York-predicated Committee to Protect Journalists estimated Tuesday that about 20 journalists are missing in Syria, and has not relinquished their nationalities. In its annual report in November, the committee concluded that the missing journalists were either being held and threatened with death by extremists, or taken captive by gangs seeking ransom. The group's report described the widespread seizure of journalists as unprecedented and largely unreported by news organizations in the hope that keeping the abductions out of public view may avail in the captives' relinquish.