ISIS

Two of the targets, Salah Gourmat and Sammy Djedou, were directly involved in plotting the November 13, 2015 Paris attacks, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said in a statement. The third, Walid Hamman, was a suicide attack planner who was convicted in absentia in Belgium for a terror plot disrupted in 2015.

The leaders were working to plot and carry out attacks on on the West, the Pentagon said, and were a part of a terror network run by Boubaker Al-Hakim, who was killed in an earlier coalition airstrike on November 16.

The freezing nights, the food shortages and -- worst of all -- the mortars and artillery shells that land with terrifying regularity on this area of desert, which is a temporary home to sheep and cattle herders.

"Yesterday a mortar attack killed a baby in his crib," says Abu Tiba. "And they couldn't transfer the mother to a hospital so she died too."

The terror organization's rise in a tumultuous Middle East has provided Obama some of the toughest decisions of his presidency, choices that CNN's Fareed Zakaria explores in "The Legacy of Barack Obama" airing Wednesday.

"The ability of ISIL to not just mass inside of Syria, but then to initiate major land offensives that took Mosul, for example, that was not on my intelligence radar screen," Obama told Zakaria, using the administration's term for the Islamic State terror group.

Iraq's Joint Operation Command did not give CNN any numbers Saturday, saying it was not obliged to publish casualty figures while the battle against ISIS was ongoing.

But it warned in a statement that "the dissemination of false and fabricated news" could help ISIS as the extremist group seeks to stop Iraqi forces retaking Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul, and surrounding areas.

The European police force says more foreign fighters will try to come back to Europe, and "several dozen" capable of attacks could already be there.

Their tactics could include car bombs, kidnappings and extortion, it said.

But the report plays down the likelihood of attacks on critical infrastructure, such as nuclear sites.

t says that IS militants now prefer soft targets, and there is now a greater emphasis on "lone actors" such as the perpetrator of the lorry attack in Nice in July.

 Monday's attack at Ohio State University was carried out by one of its students, Somali-born Abdul Razak Ali Artan, the authorities said.

The IS-affiliated Amaq news agency called the 18-year-old business undergraduate a "soldier".

Artan drove his car at a group of people, then attacked them with a knife before being shot dead.

Just opportunistic? Analysis by Gordon Corera, BBC Security Correspondent

The propaganda footage contrasts tranquil Melbourne streets with scenes of chaos and war in the Middle East.

The video calls for home-grown attacks on prominent Melbourne sites including the airport and St Paul's Cathedral.

Justice Minister Michael Keenan said it did not represent an increased threat.

"All Australians and Victorians in particular should feel very confident that our efforts are doing what they're required to do and that is keeping our country safe from this fanatical terrorism organisation," he told the Herald Sun newspaper.

But some people cross the limits when it comes showing the level of insanity they possess. They don’t even realize they might be putting their hands into a fireplace which would burn them. An 18-year-old guy in Dijon, France did the same thing.

The guy – whose name is not known – wanted to have some fun time and named his Wireless SSID “Daesh 21” after the Islamic State – a wholesale killing organization. The number 21 is a part of Dijon’s area code.

Aid groups have been warning for months that the Mosul campaign could lead to a human catastrophe. Thursday provided a glimpse of the potential tragedy.

Already, 18,000 Iraqis have been displaced from their homes since the Mosul offensive was launched October 17, according to the International Organization for Migration. The agency warns that the weeks ahead will generate even greater displacement, especially now that the battle is being fought on the streets of Iraq's second largest city. It's believed as many as 1.5 million people are still living there.

"We are going to Mosul to free them from ISIS," Haider al-Abadi told a reporter for state-run Iraqiya TV at the Qayyara airbase south of the city.

He also had a message for the estimated 5,000 ISIS militants holed up in the city: "There is no way to escape, either surrender or die."

He urged the city's beleaguered residents, who have suffered under the ISIS yoke since June 2014, to stay indoors. He also said they should resist ISIS-propogated rumors, and do what they can to prevent ISIS from destroying the city's infrastructure.