![PM: NZ won't be a target](/pf/resources/images/placeholders/placeholder_l.png?d=798)
PM: NZ won't be a target
Any commitment of military assistance to counter Islamic State militants in Iraq should not make NZ more of a target for terrorism, Prime Minister John Key says.
Any commitment of military assistance to counter Islamic State militants in Iraq should not make NZ more of a target for terrorism, Prime Minister John Key says.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott is playing down the prospect of deploying Australian combat troops on the ground in Iraq.
The argument that if we don't join the American crusade to wipe out Muslim fanatics in Iraq and Syria, they'll swoop down to Godzone and behead us all is a rerun of the old Vietnam War domino theory....
PM says any plan to give assistance to efforts against militants will probably be debated in Parliament but the ultimate decision is the Government's alone.
NZ's elite SAS personnel aren't yet on standby for deployment to combat Islamic State militants - but the PM can't rule out sending them in if asked.
New Zealand would back United States airstrikes against Islamic State jihadists in Iraq, Prime Minister John Key and Labour leader David Cunliffe say.
A Briton will be the next hostage murdered by Islamist terrorists, the British extremist known as "Jihadi John" threatened in a beheading video released yesterday.
Obama undeterred as air strikes continue even though jihadists say they will execute more US journalists
David Cameron has said that it is "increasingly likely" that a British jihadist beheaded American journalist James Foley
Up to 80 Yazidis have been reported killed by Isis (Islamic State) fighters in the biggest massacre so far of the Iraqi minority.
Hundreds of Yazidi women who were captured by Islamic extremists are being subjected to deliberate attempts to co-opt them into service as the wives of fighters.
The heads are stuck on thin metal poles above a wrought iron fence in the Islamic State's Syria stronghold, Raqqa.
Australia is considering joining the United States in a limited military operation to rescue as many as 30,000 Iraqi refugees trapped on a barren mountain in the north.
America is to supply weapons directly to Kurdish fighters in Iraq for the first time, to help the lightly armed forces in the north push back jihadist rebels, assisted by US air power.
US air strikes are boosting Kurdish morale as they hit Isis fighters, and a road is now open for thousands of Yazidis cut off in the mountains.
Kurdish leaders accuse Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of being hysterical and unbalanced, while he says the Kurdish capital, Erbil, is a centre for the Islamic State (Isis) and adherents of Saddam Hussein.
Twin sisters have fled their UK home in the middle of the night and flown to Istanbul to join ISIS fighters in Syria, it's feared.
The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (Isis) has declared the areas it occupies in Iraq and Syria as a new Islamic state.
Smoke billows up, trailing thick and black across the sky. Flames flicker from inside a scorched Peshmerga base.
This winter was not a good one for farmers in the Fertile Crescent.
Iraq has bought used fighter jets from Russia and Belarus to battle Islamist militants after delays by the US to deliver planes.
An ancient temple that featured in the film 'The Exorcist' has fallen into the hands of jihadists who have taken over northern Iraq.
United States Secretary of State John Kerry landed in Baghdad last night on a surprise trip to push for Iraqi unity and stability, as Sunni militants advanced in west Iraq after security forces retreated.