President Barack Obama pledged Wednesday to “defeat” those who threaten the world with terrorism.
The United States will “continue to go after ISIL aggressively until it’s removed from Syria and from Iraq and finally destroyed,” Obama said, using another name for ISIS.
“The world has to be united against terrorism,” Obama said, adding that “that’s a top priority of ours.”
He was speaking at a news conference in Argentina the day after more than 30 people were killing in terrorist attacks in Brussels.
Without naming GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz, President Barack Obama slammed the Texas senator’s plan to carpet bomb ISIS when asked about the idea at a news conference Wednesday.
“Not only is that contrary to our values,” the President said at an appearance in Argentina, but “that would be an extraordinary mechanism for ISIL to recruit more people.”
The President is in Buenos Aires for the second stop of a Latin America trip that started in Cuba.
It’s the first visit by a U.S. president for bilateral talks in almost 20 years and is meant to cement ties with Argentina’s newly established centrist government, but Obama mentioned Tuesday’s terrorist attacks in Europe in his opening remarks.
The death toll from the attacks at Brussels’ airport and the city’s Maelbeek metro station now stands at 31, with about 270 people injured and many still unaccounted for, including American citizens.
State Department officials said they are making “every effort” to account for the welfare of all U.S. citizens in the city and are still working through an accounting of all its personnel at the embassy. “Approximately a dozen” Americans were injured in the attack, the officials said.
The suicide attacks, claimed by ISIS, were carried out by a group that included two brothers with a history of violent crimes, Khalid and Ibrahim El Bakraoui, Belgian authorities said.
Belgian media reported that one person was arrested Wednesday, while counterterror official Paul Van Tigchelt warned Wednesday that there were others involved in the plot who remained at large in Belgium and still posed a threat.
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