Militants rake it in

U.S. says ISIS earns $1M per day selling oil

WASHINGTON — Islamic State of Iraq and Syria militants are raking in money at a remarkable rate, earning about $1 million a day from black market oil sales alone, a Treasury Department official said Thursday.

David Cohen, who leads the department's effort to undermine ISIS's finances, said the extremists also get several million dollars a month from wealthy donors, extortion rackets and other criminal activities, such as robbing banks. In addition, he said the group has taken in at least $20 million in ransom payments this year from kidnappings.

The group extracts oil from territory captured across Syria and Iraq, and sells it to smugglers.

In the Iraqi city of Mosul, ISIS terrorists are reportedly going door to door and business to business, demanding cash at gunpoint, he said.

attacks take a toll

Report: U.S.-led strikes killed at least 500

AMMAN, Jordan — Air and missile strikes in Syria by the United States and its allies during the past month have killed more than 500 extremist fighters as well as at least 32 civilians, a Syrian monitoring group said Thursday.

The tally compiled by the group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, provides one of the first measures of the impact of the U.S.-led military campaign against the extremist group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, which has seized territories in Syria and Iraq.

But the numbers also hint at ways in which the strikes have made life harder for civilians in some areas administered by ISIS.

In addition to imposing its harsh interpretation of Islam, often through public beheadings and other forms of execution, ISIS oversees the distribution of fuel and grain. The strikes have hurt its distribution abilities, leading to a rise in fuel prices across areas that have already been battered by more than 3½ years of war, according to activists in ISIS areas.

Times wires