Peter Kassig

U.S. counter-terrorism officials backed negotiations with two prominent jihadi clerics in a failed attempt to save the life of an American hostage who was later beheaded by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants, the Guardian newspaper reported on Dec. 19.
   

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said she was weighing bringing war crimes charges against militants of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), in an interview published Nov. 20.

Fatou Bensouda told the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung that such steps would be possible for extremists whose home countries have signed on to the ICC's treaty.        

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) estimated the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant’s (ISIL) combatant manpower to be between 20,000 to 31,500 in Iraq and Syria combined, and that was back in September, before the organization had attracted new recruits from all over the world.

President Barack Obama has ordered a comprehensive review of U.S. policy governing efforts to free Americans being held by militant groups overseas, the White House said on Nov. 17.
  

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has beheaded Peter Kassig, releasing a video Nov. 16 showing a masked militant standing over the severed head of a man it said was the former U.S. Army Ranger-turned-aid worker, who was seized while delivering relief supplies in Syria last year.
    

Islamic State (IS) on Sunday released a video purporting to show the beheading of US aid worker Peter Kassig and several captured Syrian soldiers.

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Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) on Nov. 16 claimed to have executed Peter Kassig, a US aid worker kidnapped in Syria, as a warning to the United States.
      
The same video showed the gruesome simultaneous beheadings of at least 18 men described as Syrian military personnel, the latest in a series of mass executions and other atrocities carried out by IS.