President Obama vows to overcome terror threat

He said the killings were "an act of terrorism designed to kill innocent people".

But "freedom is more powerful than fear," said President Obama, warning that falling prey to divisiveness in American society would play into the hands of extremists.

He also said the US must make it harder for potential attackers to obtain guns.

 

Mr Obama vowed that the US would overcome the evolving threat of terrorism, but warned that Americans "cannot turn against one another by letting this fight be defined as a war between America and Islam".

Is terror a crime or an act of war?

TERRORIST attacks in Paris killed 129 people on November 13. On the same day, a roadside bombing in Baghdad murdered 26 and on the day before those attacks, 43 people were killed by suicide bombers in Beirut.

Treating the recent terrorist attacks in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower as acts of war may not necessarily be the best answer in terms of international law, the writer argues.

A Russian jet crashed over the Sinai Peninsula last month, killing 224 people. The Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility. Pope Francis warned that a "piecemeal" third world war may have begun with the current spate of massacres and destruction.

"France is at war," declared French President François Hollande after the attacks on Paris. He called on the US and Russia to join a global coalition to destroy IS and announced a wave of measures to combat terrorism in France.