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WASHINGTON — An apparently looming American clash with Islamic State in Syria presents a defining test for President Barack Obama's doctrine of often lethal, but limited, no-boots-on-the-ground warfare.

Obama's worldview, cemented when US armies bogged down in Iraq, led him to a brand of war in which drones pound Al Qaeda militants in Pakistan and Yemen, and special forces materialise to pursue terror suspects in hostile lands like Libya and Somalia.

But as he contemplates targeting IS militants settling into a new caliphate, he is adamant his core policy of keeping ground troops back home is inviolate.

When Obama sketched his blueprint for flexing US power, at West Point military academy in May, he characteristically positioned himself between quagmire-wary realists and interventionists hooked on the hammer of US military power.

"A strategy that involves invading every country that harbors terrorist networks is naive and unsustainable," Obama said, not knowing his theory would be tested so soon by the IS surge.

Obama's rules of war allow unilateral force when US citizens and allies are in peril, and emphasise drone strikes and air power. He seeks to back local partners to take on jihadists in the Middle East and international coalitions to share the military burden.

He kept faith with his military creed in ongoing air raids against Sunni Islamic State targets in Iraq — in a war he had previously declared over.

US force spurred modest advances by Iraqi and Kurdish forces against IS, also known as ISIL and ISIS, and ethnic Yazidis were spared from genocide.

But some critics question whether this pared-down approach will be decisive if the president, as expected, targets IS strongholds in Syria.

Not an enduring tool 

The White House, despite warlike rhetoric pulsing through Washington, is tempering expectations that a military onslaught in Iraq, let alone Syria, will be decisive.

"The sense of a lot of people... is that the most important, powerful and effective tool in the president's toolbox is kinetic military action," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.

"But what we have learned in very vivid terms over the last decade or so is that a US-led military operation is not an enduring solution."

But the IS blitzkrieg in Iraq revealed limits of relying on local allies as the once-feared Peshmerga was patchy and Iraqi forces, built on US taxpayer billions, crumbled.

And despite the eclipse of Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki, hopes for the "inclusive" Baghdad government Washington says is vital to crushing IS are far from fruition.

Deal with the Devil 

In Syria, the search for partners is short and unpleasant.

Obama has been loath to arm moderate rebels, leaving anti-IS forces weak. The one potential ally with clout is President Bashar Assad. But Obama would have to swallow hard indeed to wage common cause with a man he sees as a war criminal.

Moreover, the track record of America and allies augurs ill for a new Middle East adventure.

Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, through Libya's slump into failed state misery, Washington's attempts to clamp calm on regional havoc have floundered.

"There continue to be in Washington and in the Obama administration, people who fancy that somehow or other, American military power can restabilise what we destabilise," said Andrew Bacevich, Professor Emeritus of International Relations at Boston University.

"I am skeptical of that."

And US forces sent to pound Syria could be operating in the dark.

A former US official said that unlike in Afghanistan and Iraq, where Americans patrolled for years, and human and geospatial intelligence was plentiful, the military's knowledge of Syria is limited, making it hard to pick targets.

It is not surprising then, that Obama, warned Tuesday that rooting out the IS "cancer" will not be "quick”.

'Refusing to lead' 

Still, many power players are convinced a new Middle East front is needed and could work.

Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says IS can only be defeated if hit in Syria as well as Iraq.

There is strong support for significant aid for Free Syrian Army Forces.

"You can't contain ISIS, you have to defeat it," Republican Senator John McCain, who backs US air strikes in Syria.

"This president doesn't want to lead," McCain told CNN.

Howard "Buck" McKeon, Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, wants IS "defeated and destroyed" with a diplomatic, political and military offensive.

Other foreign policy chieftains warn Obama may have to deal with the devil, amid fears IS zealots armed with Western passports could hit the US homeland.

"The Assad government may be evil — but it is a lesser evil than ISIS and a local one," Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, argued in Wednesday's Financial Times.

Though the White House refuses to work with the Syrian leader, he looms large, because he would win if IS is extinguished.

The White House demurs when asked when Obama, who travels to Europe next week for the NATO summit, will make up his mind.

GAZA CITY — Shopkeepers reopened and fishermen put out to sea on Wednesday as Gaza's 1.8 million people breathed a collective sigh of relief after a truce ended 50 days of bloodshed.

For the most part, there was a sense of hope on the streets after the surprise ceasefire came into force at 1600 GMT on Tuesday, ending seven weeks of violence which killed more than 2,140 in Gaza and 70 on the Israeli side.

"Victory is ours," enthused Ehab Abu Jalal, a man in his 30s.

"We have had enough of war, no one should have to endure everything we've been through because of the war," he said.

"This truce has to last."

Under the terms of the deal, Israel has pledged to ease restrictions at its border crossings with Gaza in a move which a Palestinian official said amounted to a lifting of its eight-year blockade.

Although talks on crunch issues such as Hamas’ demand for a port and an airport in Gaza were delayed for fresh talks in Cairo within the next month, just the mention of them was reason enough for optimism.

"We are going to have a port and an airport, the crossings will be opened, the blockade will be lifted and we will be able to live in dignity," Abu Jalal beamed.

For the moment, he is supporting his family as well as his four brothers, all of whom are unemployed construction workers, on what he earns as a metalworker.

Chance to work again 

Israel first imposed a blockade on the impoverished Gaza Strip in 2006 after fighters captured a soldier in a deadly cross-border raid.

A year later, when Hamas seized full control of the territory, it slapped even tighter restrictions on the passage of goods, blocking the import of construction materials on the grounds they could be used by fighters to build fortifications.

For Abu Jalal, an end to the blockade would mean an influx of new materials and a chance for him and his brothers to start working again.

The truce agreement also included an expansion of the fishing zone to six nautical miles in a measure which went into force before dawn on Wednesday.

"It's basically the limit that we were used to before the war, so for the moment we haven't actually gained anything," said Nizar Ayash from the Gaza fishermen's union.

During the day, fishing boats' motors spluttered into action for the first time in weeks, as fishermen headed out into the Mediterranean, eager to revive their livelihoods.

"During the war, when a fisherman went in to the sea, even just 100 metres, the Israelis would fire at him," Ayash said.

Today, the fact they can go out at all means they can get back to earning enough to be able to feed their families.

A fisherman beamed as he held up a fish from his first catch of the day.

Although the agreement speaks of a gradual expansion of the fishing limit to 12 nautical miles, it is still far from the 20 miles written into the 1994 Oslo peace accords, which has been drastically reduced by Israel.

"Palestinian fishermen demand their right to fish up to 20 miles from the coast," Ayash said, adding that what they really wanted was for Israel to "stop controlling all of our movement".

Fellow fisherman Abu Ahmed is not at all optimistic.

"For the moment, nothing has changed on the ground and we are used to the enemy breaking all of its promises," he told AFP.

"With all the sacrifices we have made, we must be able to fish further out than six miles," he said.

And sacrifice they have. During 50 days of violence, more than 2,140 Palestinians have been killed, more than 11,000 have been wounded and more than half a million displaced, while hundreds of homes have been completely destroyed.

Jawad Ayad returned to his home on Wednesday after being away for 38 days.

Although it was partially destroyed, he said Gaza's "patience" had paid off in the end.

"We have been through difficult days and made a lot of sacrifices, but God has granted us victory," said Ayad, a man in his 50s.

"I hope that this war will be the last."

DUBAI — Three Saudi princes, including Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al Faisal, flew to Qatar on Wednesday, state media reported, amid efforts to repair a rift in the US-allied Gulf Cooperation Council.

Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates recalled their ambassadors to Qatar in March, accusing Doha of failing to abide by an agreement not to interfere in one another's internal affairs. So far, efforts to resolve the dispute have failed.

The meeting comes amid growing concern in the Gulf over an increasing threat from the Islamic State, a splinter group of Al Qaeda. The IS has captured swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq in recent months, next door to some Gulf states.

Saudi Arabia's SPA news agency said Prince Saud and the head of general intelligence, Prince Khaled Bin Bandar, and Interior Minister Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef arrived in Doha on a "short brotherly visit". Qatar's QNA news agency carried a similar report, giving no details on the purpose of the trip.

Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE fell out with Qatar over the role of Islamists, including the Muslim Brotherhood, in the region. Gulf officials have said the three want Qatar to end any financial or political support for the Brotherhood, which has been declared a terrorist organisation by Saudi Arabia.

The foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, the UAE, Qatar and Oman met last week to review efforts to heal the rift, but Gulf media have said no breakthrough occurred.

Kuwait's Al Watan newspaper quoted Gulf diplomatic sources as saying that resolving the dispute was "facing difficulties". They said Saudi Arabia in particular had compiled a long list of notes on what it called Qatar's failure to abide by an agreement that bars countries from interfering in each other's affairs.

GCC officials are due to hold another meeting on Saturday, which has been described as having "special importance". The meeting, announced this week, is expected to discuss "a number of issues related to the path of GCC joint action".

In April, the body agreed on ways to implement a security agreement they reached last year, which Riyadh, Manama and Abu Dhabi, had accused Doha of not abiding by.

GAZA/OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel and the Palestinians agreed to an Egyptian-brokered plan to end the fighting in Gaza after 50 days of combat in which more than 2,100 Palestinians, most of them civilians, 64 Israeli soldiers and six civilians in Israel were killed.

Following are the broad parameters of the agreement, provided by Israeli and Palestinian officials.

As part of the deal, both sides have agreed to address more complex issues — including the release of Palestinian prisoners and Gaza's demands for a sea port — via further indirect talks starting within a month.

Immediate steps

— Hamas and other groups in Gaza agree to halt all rocket and mortar fire into Israel.

— Israel will stop all military action including air strikes and ground operations.

— Israel agrees to open more of its border crossings with Gaza to allow the easier flow of goods, including humanitarian aid and reconstruction equipment, into the coastal enclave. This was also part of a ceasefire agreement after the last conflict between Israel and Hamas in November 2012, but was never fully implemented.

— In a separate, bilateral agreement, Egypt will agree to open its 14km  border with Gaza at Rafah.

— The Palestinian Authority, headed by President Mahmoud Abbas, is expected to take over responsibility for administering Gaza's borders from Hamas. Israel and Egypt hope it will ensure weapons, ammunition and any "dual use" goods are prevented from entering Gaza. They also expect tight monitoring of imports of construction materials like cement and cast iron to make sure they are used to rebuild or build homes rather than tunnels that have been used to attack Israel.

— The Palestinian Authority will lead coordination of the reconstruction effort in Gaza with international donors, including the European Union, Qatar, Turkey and Norway.

— Israel is expected to narrow the security buffer — a no-go area for Palestinians that runs along the inside of the Gaza border — reducing it from 300 metres to 100 metres if the truce holds. The move will allow Palestinians more access to farm land close to the border.

— Israel will extend the fishing limit off Gaza's coast to 9km from 5km, with the possibility of widening it gradually if the truce holds. Ultimately, the Palestinians want to return to a full 19-kilometre international allowance. This was also part of the previous ceasefire deal in 2012 and was briefly implemented before being rescinded in March 2013.

Longer term issues to be discussed

— Hamas wants Israel to release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners rounded up in the occupied West Bank following the abduction and killing of three Jewish seminary students in June, an attack that led to the war. Hamas initially denied involvement in the killings, but a senior Hamas official in exile in Turkey last week admitted the group did carry out the attack.

— President Abbas, who heads the Fatah Party, wants freedom for long-serving Palestinian prisoners whose release was dropped after the collapse of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

— Israel wants Hamas and other groups in Gaza to hand over all body parts and personal effects of Israeli soldiers killed during the war.

— Hamas wants a sea port built in Gaza, allowing goods and people to be ferried in and out of the enclave. Israel has long rejected the plan, but it is possible that progress towards it could be made if there are absolute security guarantees. In antiquity, Gaza was a major port in the eastern Mediterranean, a critical point for spice trading. There have been plans to build a new port since the Oslo peace accords in the mid-1990s, but no progress has been made.

— Hamas wants the un-freezing of funds to allow it to pay 40,000 police, government workers and other administrative staff who have largely been without salaries since late last year. The funds were frozen by the Palestinian Authority.

— Israel has in recent weeks said it wants the full "demilitarisation" of Gaza. The United States and European Union have supported the goal, but it remains unclear what it would mean in practice and Hamas has rejected it as unfeasible. It is possible that Israel will raise it again as talks progress.

— The Palestinians also want the airport in Gaza — Yasser Arafat International, which opened in 1998 but was shut down in 2000 after it was bombed by Israel — to be rebuilt.

GAZA — Gaza's city workers cleared roads of rubble and fixed power lines on Wednesday as a ceasefire took hold after 50 days of war, with displaced families expressing a sense of relief and frustration as they returned to their damaged homes.

Some of the biggest cheer was among Gaza's fishermen, who were able to sail six miles offshore to cast their nets rather than the usual three, even as Israeli patrol boats kept watch, allowing them to return with full catches.

Thousands of families displaced from areas of northern and eastern Gaza, the location of some of the most intense fighting of the conflict, returned to their districts, only to find their homes partially or completely destroyed.

"I am happy and I am not happy," said Salama Al Attar, a father of three from the town of Beit Lahiya. "I am happy because the war has ended and I am unhappy because I have no shelter, no home."

Attar said he had fled with his family on July 15 as Israeli troops launched a ground offensive, having warned residents to leave the area. His family has spent the past six weeks living in a temporary shelter set up inside a UN-run school.

Attar is just one of the estimated 540,000 people displaced by the fighting, a quarter of Gaza's 1.8 million population.

The war, the longest fought between Israel and Hamas, left 2,139 Palestinians dead, according to Gaza health officials, with most of those civilians, including 490 children. On the Israeli side, 64 soldiers and six civilians were killed.

As well as the human toll, an estimated 15,000 homes were badly damaged or destroyed in Gaza, while the electricity power plant and a water treatment centre were heavily bombed.

In Israel, scores of towns, cities and collective farms were hit by some 4,000 mortars and rockets fired from Gaza, the reason Israel gave for launching the offensive on July 8.

With quiet in the skies — aside from the occasional Israeli surveillance drone — families set up mourning tents to receive condolences for their lost relatives.

Hamas fighters, some of them still masked, visited relatives and injured colleagues in hospital, and joined celebrations in the street that went on late into the night on Tuesday. At least one person was killed in celebratory gunfire.

"Now we leave positions in the battlefield and we assume preparations and readiness for another fight," said one masked gunman, still clutching an assault rifle.

Gains vs losses

At the small port in central Gaza City, fishermen expressed relief at their catches, showing off mounds of silvery sardines glistening in the midday sun. With fishing an intensely competitive industry in the small enclave, they were already hoping for a further extension of their maritime limits.

"We hope they open up the sea further," said Raed Baker, a member of one of the largest fishing families in Gaza. "We hope this is going to be the last war on Gaza," he added, thinking about the wider sea access a longer-term peace might bring.

In Shejaia, a district of eastern Gaza battered by artillery fire during the war, families returning to wrecked houses set up tents to stay in and looked for ways to reconnect their fractured access to power and water.

"The house was destroyed and many of the family were killed," said Umm Mohammed Al Helu, fighting back tears as she told of 10 family members killed by Israel's shelling.

If the ceasefire holds, the next objective is rapidly to get aid and reconstruction materials into Gaza via its border crossings with Egypt and Israel. UN officials have estimated the cost of rebuilding at up to $10 billion or more.

Under the terms of the ceasefire, Israel and Egypt have agreed to ease the blockade on Gaza to get goods in, but also want to ensure that weapons, ammunition and any "dual use" goods are not being smuggled into the territory. The Palestinian Authority is expected to take over the administration of the borders from Hamas to ensure tighter monitoring.

Pierre Krähenbühl, head of the UN Relief and Works Agency which supports more than 1 million people in Gaza, said the ceasefire was not enough by itself — it was essential to address the psychological and physical damage done.

"Scars of this war will take time to heal," he wrote on Twitter. "Physical and emotional wounds run deep. Children in particular will require attention and support."

DUBAI/VIENNA — Iran has conducted "mechanical" tests on a new, advanced machine to refine uranium, a senior official was quoted as saying on Wednesday, a disclosure that may annoy Western states pushing Tehran to scale back its nuclear programme.

Iran's development of new centrifuges to replace its current breakdown-prone model is watched closely by Western officials. It could allow the Islamic Republic to amass potential atomic bomb material much faster.

Tehran says its nuclear programme is peaceful and that it produces low-enriched uranium only to make fuel for a planned network of atomic energy plants. If processed to a high fissile concentration, uranium can be used for nuclear weapons.

"Manufacturing and production of new centrifuges is our right," Iranian atomic energy chief Ali Akbar Salehi said.

Iran's Fars news agency also quoted him as saying that Iran had tested its latest generation of centrifuge, the IR-8, but had not yet fed it with uranium gas.

UN nuclear agency reports this year showed Iran testing four other models under development at an above-ground Natanz nuclear site — IR-2m, IR-4, IR-6 and IR-6s — with such gas.

Iran had informed the UN International Atomic Energy Agency in December that it planned to install a single IR-8. The IAEA said in May that it had observed a new "casing" at the site, but that it was not yet connected.

An interim accord struck late last year in Geneva between Iran and six world powers — designed to buy time for talks on a final nuclear deal — stipulated that Iran could not go beyond the centrifuge research and development it has been conducting at the Natanz site, including testing of new models.

It was one of the thorniest issues to settle in technical talks on how to implement the preliminary deal.

In a comment that Western officials may dispute, Salehi said that "based on the Geneva agreement, research and development have no limit", Fars reported.

‘Very tough topic’

Salehi said Iran had "introduced" the IR-8 centrifuge to the IAEA. "Mechanical tests have been done but gas has yet to be injected," Salehi said. That would require President Hassan Rouhani's permission.

The comments reported by Fars did not make clear when the tests were carried out. The IAEA, which regularly inspects Iran's nuclear facilities, is expected to issue a quarterly report on the country's nuclear programme around September 3.

In a separate monthly update on August 20 about the implementation of the Geneva Accord, it did not suggest any new centrifuge development activities, only saying that Iran had "continued its safeguarded enrichment R&D practices".

The negotiations between Iran and the United States, France, Germany, China, Britain and Russia — aimed at ending a decade-old dispute over Iran's nuclear programme — were extended in July until November 24 in view of persistent wide differences.

A senior US official on July 18 said Iran's nuclear R&D was a "very tough topic" in the discussions, among others.

Faced with technical hurdles and difficulty in obtaining parts abroad, Iran has been trying for years to replace the erratic, 1970s vintage IR-1 centrifuge it now operates at its underground Natanz and Fordow uranium enrichment facilities.

Although Iran's progress so far appears limited, it is an issue that Western states will want to see addressed as part of any final settlement over Iran's nuclear programme.

They want Iran to roll back uranium enrichment to a point where it cannot produce enough highly enriched material for a bomb before the outside world can detect it.

GAZA/OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — An open-ended ceasefire in the Gaza war held on Wednesday as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faced strong criticism in Israel over a costly conflict with Palestinian fighters in which no clear victor emerged.

On the streets of the battered, Hamas-run Palestinian enclave, people headed to shops and banks, trying to resume the normal pace of life after seven weeks of fighting. Thousands of others, who had fled the battles and sheltered with relatives or in schools, returned home, where some found only rubble.

In Israel, sirens warning of incoming rocket fire from the Gaza Strip fell silent. But media commentators, echoing attacks by members of Netanyahu’s governing coalition, voiced deep disappointment over his leadership during the most prolonged bout of Israeli-Palestinian violence in a decade.

“After 50 days of warfare in which a terror organisation killed dozens of soldiers and civilians, destroyed the daily routine [and] placed the country in a state of economic distress ... we could have expected much more than an announcement of a ceasefire,” analyst Shimon Shiffer wrote in Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s biggest-selling newspaper.

“We could have expected the prime minister to go to the president’s residence and inform him of his decision to resign his post.”

Netanyahu, who has faced constant sniping in his Cabinet from right-wing ministers demanding military action to topple Hamas, scheduled a news conference for Wednesday evening, expected to be his first public remarks since the Egyptian-mediated truce deal took effect on Tuesday evening.

Palestinian health officials say 2,139 people, most of them civilians, including more than 490 children, have been killed in the enclave since July 8, when Israel launched an offensive with the declared aim of ending rocket salvoes.

Israel’s death toll stood at 64 soldiers and six civilians.

The ceasefire agreement called for an indefinite halt to hostilities, the immediate opening of Gaza’s blockaded crossings with Israel and Egypt, and a widening of the territory’s fishing zone in the Mediterranean.

A senior Hamas official voiced willingness for the security forces of Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the unity government he formed in June to control the passage points.

Both Israel and Egypt view Hamas as a security threat and are seeking guarantees that weapons will not enter Gaza, a narrow, densely populated territory of 1.8 million people.

Under a second stage of the truce that would begin a month later, Israel and the Palestinians would discuss the construction of a Gaza sea port and Israel’s release of Hamas prisoners in the occupied West Bank, possibly in a trade for the remains of two Israeli soldiers believed held by Hamas, the officials said.

Israel has in recent weeks said it wants the full demilitarisation of Gaza. The United States and European Union have supported the goal, but it remains unclear what it would mean in practice and Hamas has rejected it as unfeasible.

Competing victory claims

“On the land of proud Gaza, the united people achieved absolute victory against the Zionist enemy,” a Hamas statement said.

Israel said it dealt a strong blow to Hamas, killing several of its military leaders and destroying the Islamist group’s cross-border infiltration tunnels.

“Hamas’ military wing was badly hit, we know this clearly through unequivocal intelligence,” Yossi Cohen, Netanyahu’s national security adviser, said on Army Radio.

But Israel also faced persistent rocket fire for nearly two months that caused an exodus from a number of border communities and disrupted daily life in its commercial heartland.

“They are celebrating in Gaza,” Cabinet minister Uzi Landau, of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu Party in Netanyahu’s coalition, told Israel Radio. He said that for Israel, the outcome of the war was “very gloomy” because it had not created sufficient deterrence to dissuade Hamas from attacking in the future.

Nahum Barnea, one of Israel’s most popular columnists, expressed concern “that instead of paving the way to removing the threat from Gaza, we are paving the road to the next round, in Lebanon or in Gaza”.

“The Israelis expected a leader, a statesman who knows what he wants to achieve, someone who makes decisions and engages in a sincere and real dialogue with his public,” he wrote in Yedioth Ahronoth. “They received a seasoned spokesperson, and very little beyond that.”

Ben Caspit, writing in the Maariv daily, said there was no victory for Israel in a conflict that resulted in “a collapsed tourism industry [and] an economy approaching recession”.

Israel’s central bank has estimated the conflict will knock half a point off economic growth this year.

But with future diplomatic moves on Gaza’s future still pending, there was no immediate talk publicly among Netanyahu’s coalition partners of any steps to break up the alliance.

In a further sign of the truce’s impact, Egypt eased restrictions at the Rafah border crossing with Gaza, allowing World Food Programme supplies containing a shipment of 25,000 food parcels into the coastal territory for the first time since 2007, a statement by the humanitarian group said.

Israel has regularly permitted food and other humanitarian goods to be shipped into Gaza across its border, during the latest fighting as well. A government website says 5,359 truckloads of goods have transited the Kerem Shalom crossing with Gaza since July 8, the day the seven-week conflict erupted.

Israel has said it would facilitate the flow of more civilian goods and humanitarian and reconstruction aid into the impoverished territory if the truce was honoured.

But, Cohen said: “[Hamas] will...not get a port unless it declares it will disarm. It will not get even one screw unless we can be sure it is not being used to strengthen Gaza’s military might.”

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights said 540,000 people had been displaced in the Gaza Strip. Israel has said Hamas bears responsibility for civilian casualties because it operates among non-combatants and uses schools and mosques to store weapons and as launch sites for rockets.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is considering launching a humanitarian relief operation for Shiite Turkmen in northern Iraq who have been under siege for weeks by Islamic State militants, US defence officials said Wednesday.

The mission, if it went forward, would be the second recent US military humanitarian intervention in Iraq. US cargo planes dropped tonnes of food and water to displaced Yazidis on Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq earlier this month, supported by US air strikes on nearby Islamic State fighting positions.

The administration is now focused on the imperiled town of Amirli, which is situated about 169 kilometres north of Baghdad and just a few kilometres from Kurdish territory. An estimated 12,000 to 15,000 people are estimated to have no access to food or water.

The head of the United Nation's assistance mission in Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov, earlier this week called for urgent action in Amirli and described the situation as desperate.

Three US defence officials said a humanitarian mission is under consideration. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they could not discuss internal administration deliberations by name. The timetable for a decision on whether and how to go ahead with the mission was not immediately clear.

Separately, the top US commander in the Middle East, Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, met Wednesday in Baghdad with Iraq's premier-designate, Haider Al Abadi, to discuss cooperation in the fight against the Islamic State group, according to a statement issued by Abadi's office. The statement said Austin expressed the US government's willingness to provide more counterterrorism training for Iraqi security forces.

The US has several hundred military personnel in Iraq providing security for American facilities, including the US embassy in Baghdad and the US consulate in Erbil, and coordinating with Iraqi security forces.

The US also has a military-run office of security cooperation as part of the US embassy, but the military personnel assigned to that office work on military sales rather than provide field training for Iraqi forces.

The siege of Amirli is part of the Islamic State's offensive, which seized large swaths of western and northern Iraq this summer and pushed further in neighbouring Syria.

Residents have put up fierce resistance since the siege began, preventing the Sunni militants from successfully taking over the town. But the militants have, in turn, cut off the town, leaving thousands without access to food, water and medicine, despite recent airdrops by the Iraqi military.

Like other minorities in Iraq such as the Christians and the Yazidis, the Shiite Turkmen community has also been targeted by the Islamic State, which views them as apostates. Tens of thousands of Turkmens, Iraq's third-largest ethnic group, have been uprooted from their homes since the Islamic State took Mosul, the northern city of Tikrit and a spate of towns and villages in the area.

Dr. Ali Al Bayati, head of an Iraq-based humanitarian group called the Turkmen Saving Foundation, said Wednesday that at least 15,000 civilians, including many women and children, remain trapped in Amirli without access to food or water.

He said the streets are blocked by Islamic State fighters and the only way out is by air. The nearest Iraqi ground force is in the town of Toz Khormatu, which has seen intense clashes in recent weeks. Electricity and water are completely cut off in Amirli, according to Bayati.

Bayati said airdrops from the Iraqi military have provided residents with desperately needed staples like rice, oil and cheese, as well as weapons to help them resist the Islamic State. However, the residents often go 10 days without any airdrops successfully reaching them.

David Pollock, a former State Department official and now a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said Tuesday the US military could assist in opening a land corridor into Kurdish territory for the besieged Turkmen.

"It's a very urgent situation," Pollock said.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass — A US writer freed this week after being held captive for two years by Syrian insurgents on Wednesday thanked those who had worked for his release and said he was emotionally overwhelmed by his welcome home.

Peter Theo Curtis, who was held by Nusra Front, Al Qaeda's official wing in Syria, said he had no idea while he was imprisoned that there had been hundreds of people around the world pushing for his release.

In a written statement released overnight, Curtis also thanked the government of Qatar and US officials for working to free him.

"I am just overwhelmed with emotion," Curtis, 45, told reporters outside his mother's home Wednesday morning.

Curtis, who was freed on Sunday, said numerous strangers had approached him to welcome him back to the United States.

"I suddenly remember how good the American people are and what kindness they have in their hearts. And to all those people I say a huge 'thank you' from my heart, from the bottom of my heart," he said.

He declined to answer questions. "I will respond, but I can't do it now," said Curtis, who along with his mother Nancy Curtis raised a US flag at the home before he spoke to reporters.

Curtis arrived in the United States late on Tuesday after a flight from Tel Aviv, meeting his mother at Boston's Logan Airport.

His release comes against the backdrop of other efforts to free other US hostages in Syria as the United States considers possible options, including air strikes, to target the Islamic State organisation.

Earlier on Tuesday, his parents said in various television interviews that they were relieved. Their son's return came just days after rivals of Al Nusra Front, the militant group Islamic State, last week said it killed journalist James Foley and threatened another still being held hostage, Steven Sotloff.

Curtis' ex-girlfriend, Jennifer Steil, said he spoke Arabic fluently and understood the Koran, rare attributes among Westerners who travelled to the region.

"He had a passionate interest in trying to understand what's going on in the Middle East and why people were turning to violence," said Steil, an author and journalist.

WASHINGTON — An American was killed last weekend in Syria, where he was fighting for the Islamic State, US media reported Tuesday, in an account only partially confirmed by US officials.

Douglas McCain had joined the violent extremist group as a fighter, leaving his family "devastated" and "just as surprised as the country", his uncle Ken McCain told CNN.

He had converted from Christianity to Islam several years ago, according to the uncle, who said the US State Department informed the family of his death on Monday.

"We are in contact with the family and are providing all possible consular assistance," agency spokeswoman Jen Spaki said.

"There's typically a process that needs to be gone through before any confirmation can be made."

She declined to comment further "out of respect for the family".

A number of Americans are believed to have joined militants in the region.

Former classmates recalled McCain as a "goofball" who liked to play basketball and aspired to become a rapper.

"Doug was a fun guy to be around. Played basketball, joked a lot, had a small sense of humour. Got along with most... Wasn't the best athlete, but liked to play," a former basketball friend told NBC News.

Friends said on Twitter that he converted to Islam around 2004.

The younger McCain was "a good person, loved his family, loved his mother, loved his faith", his uncle told CNN, referring to his nephew's Christian beliefs before his conversion.

McCain was killed in a battle against Al Nusra Front, an Al Qaeda-linked group blacklisted by the United States, the report said.

NBC News said McCain, of San Diego, California, was carrying about $800 in cash and his American passport in his pockets.

It cited a Free Syrian Army-linked activist as saying McCain was among three foreign fighters in the IS camp who died during the battle.

On Facebook, the 33-year-old called himself "Duale ThaslaveofAllah", and his Twitter bio read "It's Islam over everything", according to NBC.

The State Department says there are some 12,000 extremist fighters from countries around the world — hailing from as many as 50 countries — including some Americans.

US officials last week told AFP that more than 100 US nationals had left to fight in Syria or tried to do so.