Europe and the United States are the next targets of ultra-violent ISIS jihadists rampaging through Syria and Iraq, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia warned in remarks published Saturday.
“If we ignore them, I am sure they will reach Europe in a month and America in another month,” Abdullah said, according to reports in Saudi media.
“Terrorism knows no border and its danger could affect several countries outside the Middle East,” the king said.
The Saudi monarch spoke at a ceremony to welcome new ambassadors to the kingdom, including US envoy Joseph Westphal and British ambassador John Jenkins.
Abdullah denounced ISIS’s savage beheadings and mass killings. He said ISIS jihadists “do not know humanity,” according to a Saudi Press Agency report.
“You see how the jihadists carry out beheadings and make children show the severed heads in the street,” he said.
Abdullah condemned the “cruelty” of the beheadings and children’s involvement in them, saying they are “against the teachings of Allah almighty.”
“It is no secret to you, what they have done and what they have yet to do,” Abdullah said, according to a story in the newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat.
“I ask you to transmit this message to your leaders: ‘Fight terrorism with force, reason and (necessary) speed.’ ”
President Obama is weighing whether the US should unleash airstrikes on ISIS positions in Syria. US air attacks on ISIS in Iraq helped turn back the terrorists’ threat against Kurdish territory.
Secretary of State John Kerry says the US will use an upcoming NATO summit to push for a coalition of countries to beat back ISIS incursions in Syria and Iraq.
“With a united response led by the United States and the broadest possible coalition of nations, the cancer of ISIS will not be allowed to spread to other countries,” Kerry wrote in an opinion piece in The New York Times.