Footage showed the 36-year-old former Manchester United defender aiming an acrobatic kick at a supporter at the side of the pitch during the warm-up.

Evra will be interviewed before any disciplinary action is decided.

A Marseille statement also condemned the “unacceptable behaviour” by a “handful of provocateurs”.

European football’s governing body Uefa charged France international Evra with violent conduct earlier on Friday, with the full-back suspended for “at least one game”.

French newspaper L’Equipe reported that Marseille supporters had been jeering Evra for about half an hour while the players prepared for the game, which the Ligue 1 side lost 1-0.

The player had gone over to the fans to talk to them – but the situation escalated.

Evra, who was named as a substitute, was dismissed before kick-off, and Marseille began the game with 11 players.

“As a professional and experienced player, Patrice Evra could not respond in such an inappropriate way,” the statement added.

“In addition, the first results of the internal investigation conducted by the club reveal unacceptable behaviour on the part of a handful of provocateurs who uttered particularly serious hateful attacks against the player, even though the latter and his team-mates warmed up for an important game.”

His former Manchester United team-mate, Mikael Silvestre, told BBC Sport that Evra had “no future” at Marseille, but that the incident would not be the end of his career.

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Source: BBC

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The Cameroon international, 23, was on loan to the Ligue 1 club last season, scoring four goals.

Njie joined Spurs from Lyon in 2015 for a reported £10m and made 14 appearances for the club, though he suffered a serious knee injury in December 2015.

“We wish Clinton all the best for the future,” Tottenham said.

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The 44-year-old aid worker was seized in Syria in 2013. He was being held by Islamic State militants who have already killed two US captives.

The latest video also includes a threat to kill a second British hostage.

The PM vowed to do everything possible to find the killers. Mr Haines’s family said he would be “missed terribly”.

Born in Holderness, East Yorkshire, Mr Haines went to school in Perth and had been living in Croatia with his second wife, who is Croatian, and their four-year-old daughter. His parents live in Ayr.

‘Despicable and appalling’

In a statement released by the Foreign Office, Mike Haines said his brother, a father of two, “was and is loved by all his family”.

“David was most alive and enthusiastic in his humanitarian roles. His joy and anticipation for the work he went to do in Syria is for myself and family the most important element of this whole sad affair,” he said.

Downing Street said the prime minister had returned to No 10 following the release of the video

Mr Cameron, who is due to chair an emergency Cobra committee meeting later, said the murder of an innocent aid worker was “despicable and appalling”.

“It is an act of pure evil. My heart goes out to the family of David Haines who have shown extraordinary courage and fortitude throughout this ordeal.

“We will do everything in our power to hunt down these murderers and ensure they face justice, however long it takes,” the prime minister added.

‘Grief and resolve’

The Foreign Office is working to verify the video, which was released on Saturday night. It begins with a clip of Mr Cameron and then features a man who appears to be Mr Haines dressed in orange overalls, kneeling in front of a masked man holding a knife.

The victim says: “My name is David Cawthorne Haines. I would like to declare that I hold you, David Cameron, entirely responsible for my execution.”

He says Mr Cameron had entered into a coalition with the US against the Islamic State “just as your predecessor Tony Blair did”.

“Unfortunately it is we the British public that in the end will pay the price for our parliament’s selfish decisions,” he said.

The militant, who appears to have a British accent, is then recorded as saying: “This British man has to pay the price for your promise, Cameron, to arm the Peshmerga against the Islamic State.”

In the video a masked militant is seen standing beside a man who appears to be David Haines

Islamic State is now in control of large parts of northern Iraq and Syria, and the CIA estimates that the group could have as many as 30,000 fighters in the region.

The UK has donated heavy machine guns and ammunition to authorities in Iraq to help fight IS militants, the Ministry of Defence has previously said.

Kurdish forces, known as the Peshmerga, have been involved in heavy fighting with IS.

International condemnation

US President Barack Obama said: “Our hearts go out to the family of Mr Haines and to the people of the United Kingdom.”

In a statement, he said the US would work with the UK and a “broad coalition of nations” to “bring the perpetrators of this outrageous act to justice”.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Mr Haines’s murder was “further demonstration that this particular terrorist group does not just do evil, but exults in doing evil”.

The French presidency said: “The heinous murder of David Haines shows once again how the international community must mobilise against [IS].”

Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond said the release of the video “demonstrated a degree of brutality which defies description”.

“It should be remembered that Mr Haines was in the region as an aid worker helping local people,” Mr Salmond added.

And he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr programme that Mr Haines’s death was “an act of unspeakable barbarism”.

He also said a resilience meeting – the Scottish government’s version of the UK’s Cobra security meeting – would be held on Sunday morning to discuss issues such as the privacy of Mr Haines’s family.

The leader of the Better Together campaign in Scotland, Alistair Darling, told the same programme that “David Haines was trying to help people in dreadful conditions”.

His death was “inexcusable, a barbaric act” that would “strengthen the resolve of the international community,” Mr Darling added.

Analysis: Jim Muir, BBC News

The beheadings of David Haines, and the two American journalists before him, are believed to have been filmed in the desert near Raqqa, a provincial capital in north-east Syria which has become the unofficial capital of the self-styled Islamic State.

Far from being just a shadowy terror group, IS controls a large swathe of territory in the north and east of Syria, linked since June to almost all the mainly Sunni parts of Iraq.

It controls a population of around 5 or 6 million people, including Iraq’s second city, Mosul.

In northern Iraq, the Kurds, helped by US air strikes, are slowly regaining the ground they lost to IS when it suddenly turned on them last month.

That’s the template the Americans and their allies want to apply to other parts of Iraq, and Syria, but the situation in both countries is complicated by the absence of clear-cut, cohesive local forces on the ground to work with.

Labour leader Ed Miliband said he was “sickened at the disgusting, barbaric killing” of Mr Haines.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, posted on Twitter: “In every church let us pray for the family of David Haines, evilly killed in the place he was serving in love for its suffering people.”

Senior UK imams and British Muslim community leaders have also condemned the killing, including Shuja Shafi of the Muslim Council of Britain.

He said: “David Haines went out to the region to help the people of the region. That extremists chose to murder him only shows once again the depravity of their warped ideology.

“These extremists in Iraq and Syria claim to be acting in the name of Islam. But there is nothing in our faith that condones such behaviour.

“These extremists wish to draw attention and recruits to their cause by sowing division and fear between people here in Britain. Let us deny them that luxury. The best way to defeat their extremism is to build even stronger bonds between communities here in Britain.”

‘Criminals and villains’

Paul Rogers, professor of peace studies at Bradford University, said the UK’s natural reaction would be to “go in hard” against IS, but that this presented a problem.

“[Islamic State] actually wants the West to attack it. If it gets that, it can present itself as fighting the far enemy. This presents the British government, or any government in this position, with a real dilemma,” he told BBC Breakfast.

“Do you do what many people in the country would want you to do? But if that’s something your enemy would actually prefer, do you hold back and try other ways?”

Mr Rogers also said the West was now moving into “what is essentially a third Iraq war” and that this time it would extend into Syria.

US journalist James Foley was killed by militants last month – his parents called him a “martyr for freedom”.

The family of US journalist Steven Sotloff said he had given his life to reporting from war zones

Mr Haines was taken hostage in the village of Atmeh, in the Idlib province of Syria, in March 2013.

He had been helping French agency Acted deliver humanitarian aid, having previously helped local people in Libya and South Sudan.

The release of the video came hours after his family had made a direct appeal to IS to contact them.

IS – also known as Isis or Isil – has seized large swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria and declared a new caliphate – or Islamic state.

Militants from the extremist group have killed two US hostages in recent weeks, posting video evidence on the internet.

They threatened to kill Mr Haines during a video posted online showing the killing of US journalist Steven Sotloff earlier this month.

The extremist group also killed fellow US journalist James Foley last month.

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Source: BBC

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Obama will make a speech on Wednesday to “describe what our game plan’s going to be,” and meet congressional leaders on Tuesday to seek their support for his strategy to halt the militant Islamist group, which controls parts of Syria and Iraq.

The president, who campaigned on getting U.S. troops out ofIraq, has struggled to articulate how he wants to address Islamic State, telling reporters last month that “we don’t have a strategy yet” to tackle the group.

“I just want the American people to understand the nature of the threat and how we’re going to deal with it and to have confidence that we’ll be able to deal with it,” Obama said in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” that aired on Sunday. The interview was conducted in Washington on Saturday.

“The next phase is now to start going on some offense,” he said.

The Wednesday speech will come a day ahead of the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when al Qaeda militants flew hijacked planes into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon, killing almost 3,000 people.

“I want everybody to understand that we have not seen any immediate intelligence about threats to the homeland” from the Islamic State group, Obama said.

But the group has attracted foreign fighters from Western nations who could travel to the United States “unimpeded,” Obama said. “Over time, that can be a serious threat to the homeland,” he said.

In an interview earlier this year, Obama had put the group in a category of foreign militant movements that were a minor threat, comparing it to a “JV”, or junior varsity, team. But he told NBC the group had grown. “They’re not a JV team,” he said.

OBAMA’S STRATEGY

He ruled out sending U.S. ground troops to fight in Iraq or Syria, saying “this is not the equivalent of the Iraq war,” and described the coalition he spent time building last week at a NATO meeting in Wales.

This is going to be “similar to the kinds of counter terrorism campaigns that we’ve been engaging in consistently over the last five, six, seven years,” Obama said.

“We are going to be a part of an international coalition, carrying out air strikes in support of work on the ground by Iraqi troops, Kurdish troops,” Obama said. Nine other countries have agreed to be “core” members of the coalition.

Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel are engaged in a mission in the region to flesh out the plan. “We are going to systematically degrade their capabilities. We’re going to shrink the territory that they control. And ultimately we’re going to defeat ’em,” Obama said.

In the interview, Obama did not say whether he would authorize air strikes in Syria. “The strategy both for Iraq and for Syria is that we will hunt down ISIL members and assets wherever they are,” he said, using an acronym for the Islamic State.

He emphasized the United States would need Sunni Arab states in the region includingSaudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey to “step up” and help.

“I think, for … perhaps the first time, you have absolute clarity that the problem for Sunni states in the region, many of whom are our allies, is not simply Iran. It’s not simply a Sunni-Shia issue,” he said. Iran is a Shiite-dominated country.

Obama wants regional allies to help win over and work with disaffected Sunni tribes in Iraq – an effort he said could include an “economic element.”

Obama has faced criticism for appearing disengaged on the Iraq crisis, particularly after he played a round of golf minutes after speaking about the beheading of American journalist James Foley by Islamic State militants.

Obama told NBC he wished he could get “a vacation from the press” but admitted the golf game was a bad decision.

“I should’ve anticipated the optics,” he said, explaining the “theater” involved with being president is “not something that always come naturally to me.”

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Source: Reuters

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“I don’t want to put the cart before the horse,” Obama told reporters during a White House news briefing. “We don’t have a strategy yet.”

Obama said he’s asked America’s top defense officials to prepare “a range of options” about what the United States could do to go after ISIS in Syria, which he described as “a safe haven” for the Sunni extremist group that calls itself the Islamic State.

The President said he was sending Secretary of State John Kerry to the region to work on building a coalition needed to face the threat of ISIS militants.

“Clearly, ISIL has come to represent the very worst elements in the region that we have to deal with collectively, and that’s going to require us to stabilize Syria in some fashion,” Obama said. “And stabilizing Syria means that we’ve to got get moderate Sunnis who are able to govern and offer … a real alternative.”

But that may prove to be problematic. Syria’s ally, Russia, has repeatedly blocked attempts by the U.N. Security Council that call on President Bashar al-Assad to step down as part of an effort to end the civil war that has wracked the country for three years.

Among the options Obama said he requested from the U.S. military were plans to make sure ISIS does not overrun Iraq.

U.S. airstrikes in Iraq are working, he said.

“The terrorists of (ISIS) are losing arms and equipment,” Obama said, and Iraqi and Kurdish forces are making inroads.

But “the idea that the United States or any outside power would perpetually defeat ISIS … is unrealistic,” Obama said, insisting that a strong, trusted Iraqi government is critical to ousting the Islamist terror group permanently.

ISIS claims mass execution in Syria

ISIS said Thursday that it has executed at least 250 Syrian soldiers at an air base in the northeastern city of Raqqa.

The group said on one of its official websites that it killed the soldiers Wednesday. It also claimed to have killed 600 government soldiers in the fight for the Tabqa air base since August 19.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, meanwhile, reported that 200 Syrian soldiers and 346 ISIS fighters died in the fight for the air base, which was considered the military’s last holdout in eastern Syria. Hundreds more were wounded, the London-based activist group said.

ISIS claims that a video it posted online Thursday shows Syrian soldiers being paraded through the desert in their underwear. Another video posted by Syrian activists purportedly shows bodies lined up on the ground.

Later, ISIS posted a video that it says shows captured Kurdish soldiers, known as Peshmerga, wearing orange clothing similar to that worn by by American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff in other videos posted by the militant group.

Three masked men appear to decapitate one of the orange-clad soldiers in front of a mosque in Mosul.

In the video, titled “A message with blood to the leaders of the America Kurdish alliance,” ISIS demands that the Kurdish government withdraw its forces from areas where it is battling the group.

CNN could not independently confirm the claims or the authenticity of the videos.

Fighting flares near Mosul Dam

The videos come amid reports of fresh fighting between ISIS and Kurdish forces near Iraq’s Mosul Dam and the burning of oil wells near the strategic town of Zummar.

The Peshmerga are battling the militants near the town, important because of its location to the main thoroughfare that connects Mosul to the Syrian border, as well as near the Mosul Dam and the strategic Ain Zala oilfield, which ISIS forces seized from the Kurds this month, said Faud Hussein, chief of staff for Kurdish regional President Masoud Barzani.

Torching the three oil wells that make up the Ain Zala oilfield is an apparent effort by ISIS fighters to try to interrupt a Peshmerga advance on ISIS positions, Hussein said.

The extent of the damage to the oil fields wasn’t immediately known.

The fighting comes nearly two weeks after thousands of Peshmerga and Iraqi commandos ousted ISIS forces for control of the dam, a crucial facility that provides electricity for millions of people in Iraq.

Kurdish officials have credited U.S. airstrikes against ISIS with helping Peshmerga forces push back against the extremists, whose breathtaking gains and brutal tactics captured the attention of world leaders.

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Source: CNN

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US Navy fighters and drones provided air cover to Kurdish and Iraqi forces battling IS near the city of Mosul.

On Tuesday the group released a video showing the beheading of journalist James Foley, who went missing in 2012.

In it, the militants threatened to kill another US reporter they are holding.

But since the video was released, American forces have conducted 14 new strikes near the Mosul dam, a key facility recaptured from IS militants earlier this week.

The raids provided air cover as Kurdish and Iraqi forces pushed into the hills south-west of the site, Kurdish sources said. US officials said they had successfully eliminated vehicles and other targets belonging to IS.

The US has been carrying out strikes against IS – which has been seizing large parts of Syria and Iraq – since 8 August.

In its video, the group said it has killed Foley in revenge for such attacks. US President Barack Obama on Wednesday called the killing “an act of violence that shocks the conscience of the entire world”.

Failed rescue

Also on Wednesday, the Pentagon said the US had “attempted a rescue operation recently to free a number of American hostages held in Syria”.

It said the operation “involved air and ground components”.

US forces have been carrying out air strikes in northern Iraq for almost two weeks

Kurdish forces are pushing into the hills south west of the dam above Mosul

“Unfortunately, the mission was not successful because the hostages were not present at the targeted location.”

It was the first time the US government had acknowledged that its forces had operated in Syria since the country’s civil war began in 2011.

The New York Times newspaper quoted unnamed US officials as saying the raid occurred at a oil refinery in the north.

They say commandos were dropped by helicopters, but found that the hostages had recently been moved.

The statement did not specify whether the operation had intended to rescue Foley, who was kidnapped in Syria in November 2012.

However, senior US officials – speaking on condition of anonymity – confirmed this. They added that the troops had killed several IS militants.

Foley, 40, had reported across the Middle East, working for US publication GlobalPost and other media outlets.

‘Warning to Obama’

In the IS video, titled A Message to America, a man identified as James Foley is dressed in an orange jumpsuit, kneeling in desert-like terrain beside an armed man dressed in black.

He gives a message to his family and links his imminent death to the US bombing campaign in Iraq.

Clearly under duress, he says: “I call on my friends, family and loved ones to rise up against my real killers, the US government, for what will happen to me is only a result of their complacency and criminality.”

Then the masked militant – who speaks with a British accent – delivers a warning to the US president: “Any attempt by you, Obama, to deny the Muslims their rights of living in safety under the Islamic caliphate will result in the bloodshed of your people.”

After he speaks, the militant appears to start cutting at his captive’s neck before the video fades to black.

Another captive, identified as American journalist Steven Sotloff, is shown at the end, with the warning that his fate depends on President Obama’s next move.

Mr Sotloff was abducted in northern Syria a year ago.

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Source: BBC

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