High-ranking U.S. officials said Wednesday that not only are Sunni radicals with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant “worse than al Qaeda,” but that the group has a message for the president: “We’re coming for you, Barack Obama.”
Brett McGurk, the deputy assistant secretary of state, told lawmakers at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing that ISIL may have “changed its name,” but that it’s still al Qaeda.
“In fact, it is worse than al Qaeda,” he said, The Hill reported.
Elissa Slotkin, the acting principal deputy undersecretary of Defense for policy, added that ISIL also has its eye on the president, threatening “We’re coming for you, Barack Obama,” The Hill reported.
The ISIL, under the command of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has taken over large swathes of Iraq and confiscated heavy weaponry previously belonging to Iraqi security forces in the past two months. The terrorist group is now in possession of as many as 52 U.S.-made M198 howitzers, McClatchy news service reported in June.
In Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, the Sunni terrorists have told Christians they must convert to Islam or die by “the sword.”
SEE ALSO: ISIL captured 52 U.S.-made howitzers; artillery weapons cost 500K each
“This is ethnic cleansing but nobody is speaking up,” Yonadam Kanna, Iraq’s most prominent Christian politician, said earlier this week, Agence France-Presse reported.
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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