Two teenagers who became poster girls for the jihad in Syria are now desperate to come home after becoming disillusioned with life in the war-torn country.

A “domestic beheading” inspired by foreign fanatics is one of several threats New Zealand potentially faces from the so-called Islamic State, John Key said this morning.

Kurdish protesters clashed with police in Turkey, leaving at least 14 people dead and scores injured, as demonstrators in Brussels forced their way into the European Parliament, part of Europe-wide....

If New Zealand decides to send forces to support an international response to the "Islamic State" in Iraq and Syria (Isis), the decision will be made by the Government not Parliament, the Prime Minister has explained.

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.

Isis is close to capturing the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobane, just a short distance from the Turkish border, after a three-week siege in which US air strikes turned out to be ineffective in preventing the militants from winning an important victory.

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.

The US-led coalition against jihadists in Syria has struck the entrance to the country’s main gas plant.

RAF jets were unleashed above Iraq as Britain threw its military might behind a US-led air war against the Isis (Islamic State) terror group.

The daughter of the British hostage murdered by Isis militants has spoken out against the terrorist organisation that has ravaged Iraq and Syria, saying it needs to be eradicated.

American air strikes have done little to dislodge Isis fighters trying to take a major Kurdish city on the Turkish border, Kurdish fighters and commanders said yesterday.

A mystery woman has covertly provided the world with a rare glimpse of life in the heartland of the Islamic State using a camera concealed beneath her niqab.

The US and Arab strikes on militant targets in Syria overnight were "only the beginning" of a coalition effort to degrade and ultimately destroy ISIS militants.

American drones are being flown over the Syrian stronghold of Isis (Islamic State) for the first time, in an effort to target the jihadi group's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The Prince of Wales has written an impassioned letter to Christians in Iraq speaking of his "heartbreak" at their suffering at the hands of Jihadists.

An Iraqi soldier survived a mass execution carried out by Islamic State militants (Isis) by dropping to the floor and pretending to be dead.

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.

The video showing the killing of Steven Sotloff is a mirror image of that two weeks ago carrying the last words of his colleague James Foley.

The civil war in Syria has forced a record three million people out of the country as more than a million people fled in the past year, the United Nations refugee agency said yesterday.

At some stage, a vigorous and viable response to the threat posed by the Islamic State was always going to be necessary.

A British extremist who is one of the suspects in the murder of James Foley is the son of an alleged al-Qaeda terrorist awaiting trial.

This weekend large numbers of Isis jihadists were trying to secure the border area, pushing northwards in armoured trucks looted from abandoned Iraqi military bases.

British and US counterterrorism analysts believe one of the Britons bears a resemblance to the jihadist who beheaded Foley.