Obama tells fearful America Daesh will be defeated

Washington: US President Barack Obama, in a rare prime-time speech designed to reassure a jittery nation, vowed Sunday that America will destroy the Islamic State group or Daesh and hunt down its followers at home or abroad.

Facing questions about his leadership and strategy, Obama harnessed the highest trappings of US power to calm a country put on edge by a rampage in California that killed 14 Americans.

"After so much war, many Americans are asking whether we are confronted by a cancer that has no immediate cure," said Obama in a solemn address from the Oval Office, adding that the San Bernardino massacre was evidence of an "evolving" and increasingly homegrown threat.

As a father of two daughters, Obama said, he could imagine himself or his kin in San Bernardino or Paris.

"Here´s what I want you to know," he told the country. "The threat from terrorism is real, but we will overcome it. We will destroy ISIL and any other organization that tries to harm us."

"Our military will continue to hunt down terrorist plotters in any country where it is necessary."

Obama urged Muslims in America and around the world to "decisively and unequivocally reject the hateful ideology that groups like Daesh and Al-Qaeda promote."

He detailed a multi-pronged strategy against Daesh that will rely as much on community action, high-tech and countering propaganda as military force.

- ´Dark path of radicalization´ -

It is just the third time Obama has delivered an Oval Office address -- deployed by presidents since Harry Truman to convey resolve in the face of a national crisis.

First was when the Gulf of Mexico was being flooded with crude oil and later to mark the end of combat operations in Iraq.

A senior administration official said the speech was designed to convey the seriousness with which Obama was taking the shootings in San Bernardino, which are being investigated as a terror attack.