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In brief: Netanyahu: Hamas, Islamic State similar

From Wire Reports

UNITED NATIONS – In a blistering speech to the United Nations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Monday that Hamas and the Islamic State are “branches of the same poisonous tree,” both bent on world domination through terror, just as the Nazis were.

Netanyahu also lashed back at Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who accused Israel last week of carrying out war crimes and waging a “war of genocide” during the fighting in Gaza. Netanyahu said Hamas committed “the real war crimes” in Gaza by using Palestinian civilians as human shields.

Addressing the U.N. General Assembly’s annual ministerial meeting, the Israeli leader argued that Israel’s fight against Hamas and the U.S. military campaign against the Islamic State are part of the same cause – the defeat of Islamic extremism.

Netanyahu railed against world leaders for simultaneously condemning the Jewish state for its war with Hamas and praising President Barack Obama for attacking Islamic State militants and other extremists in Syria and Iraq.

Militants close in on Kurdish area of Syria

ANTAKYA, Turkey – Militants of the Islamic State were closing in Monday on a Kurdish area of Syria on the border with Turkey – an advance unhindered so far by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes, including one that struck a grain silo, killing two civilians, according to activists.

Islamic State fighters pounded the city of Kobani with mortars and artillery shells, advancing within 3 miles of the Kurdish frontier city, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Nawaf Khalil, a Kurdish official.

The Islamic extremists intensified their shelling of the border region following U.S.-led strikes Saturday. The aerial assault appeared to have done little to thwart the militants, Kurdish officials and activists said, adding that if anything, the extremists seemed more determined to seize the area, which would deepen their control over territory stretching from the Turkish border, across Syria and to the western edge of Baghdad.

The push by Islamic State fighters caused thousands more Kurds to flee the Kobani area Monday, adding to about 150,000 refugees who have fled to Turkey since mid-September.