Brit girl vows to be the first to kill a US soldier

Syria/Baghdad: Married to an Islamic State extremist in Syria complete with handguns and his’ n’ hers Kalashnikov rifles, Khadijah Dare’s is no ordinary life. But it is a world away from her previous existence as the Lewisham teenager who wore jeans and platform heels and loved her mother’s home cooking.

And hours after the beheading of American journalist James Foley at the hands of a British jihadist, this 22-year-old gloated on social media at his execution and vowed that she would be the first British woman to kill a US soldier. Dare was gleeful that the ‘UK must be shaking up’ after the execution and from her home in the Syrian scrub she tweeted, ‘Any links 4 da execution of da journalist plz. Allahu Akbar. UK must b shaking up haha. I wna b da 1st UK woman 2 kill a UK or US terorrist!’.

In Beirut, at least 70 Islamic State jihadist fighters have been killed in 48 hours of clashes with Syrian army troops in the northern province of Raqa, a monitoring group said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said IS had launched a major push late Tuesday on Tabqa military airport, the last remaining army stronghold in Raqa, which has been largely overrun by the jihadists. "At least 70 IS fighters have been lost since early Wednesday in regime air raids, Scud missile blasts and mine explosions," Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.Meanwhile, Militants targeted a Sunni mosque in a province next to the Iraqi capital during weekly prayers, killing at least 46 people and wounding over 50, officials said. Islamic State militants are the most dangerous threat America has faced in years, a top US official has warned.

Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said US strikes had weakened IS in Iraq, but the group could be expected to regroup.