Obama vows to redouble attempts to eliminate IS after Paris attacks

US president Barack Obama vowed yesterday to step up efforts to eliminate IS (Islamic State) in Syria and prevent it from carrying out attacks like those in Paris, while European leaders urged Russia to focus its military efforts on the radical Islamists.

Speaking at a G20 leaders’ summit in Turkey, Obama described the killings in Paris claimed by IS as an attack on the civilised world and said the US would work with France to hunt down those responsible.

The two-day summit brings Obama and fellow world leaders just 500km from Syria, where a four-year conflict has transformed IS into a global security threat and spawned Europe’s largest migration flows since the Second World War.