ISIL's haunting threat: 'We will strike America at its heart'

Show Caption Hide Caption Islamic State purportedly threatens to attack Washington In a new video surfacing just days after the Paris attacks, men claiming to be Islamic State militants threaten an attack on Washington D.C.

WASHINGTON — A new Islamic State video warns of deadly consequences in the United States or any other country that joins the French in their punishing airstrikes against the radical group's training camps and other facilities in Syria and Iraq.

"We tell countries participating in the crusader campaign: We swear that you will experience a similar day to the one that France experiences; since if we have struck France in its heart – in Paris – then we swear that we will strike America at its heart – in Washington," said a militant who calls himself Al-Ajkrar Al-Iraqi, according to a translation provided by the Middle East Media Research Institute.

The video was released by Salah al-Din Province in northeastern Iraq, according to MEMRI. Salah al-Din includes Tikrit, the birthplace of Iraq's former dictator Saddam Hussein, which borders Kirkuk, the Kurdish-held northern Iraqi city that stopped the radical group's advance as it seized parts of Iraq and Syria last year. The video also warned European nations not to interfere with the group's drive to create a "caliphate" across a wide swath of Syrian and Iraq that would be governed by a strict interpretation of Islam.

"I say to European countries: We are coming to you with car bombs and explosions. We are coming to you with explosive vests and silencers. You cannot respond to us because we are far stronger now than we were before," another speaker, Abu Gharib Al-Jazae'ri said in the video. The authenticity of the video could not be immediately confirmed.

The 12-minute video came as France launched a second day of airstrikes against ISIS targets in Raqqa, Syria, in retaliation for a coordinated attack in Paris that the militant group claimed it had planned. The Paris attack, conducted by suicide bombers and gunfire, killed 132 people. Seven attackers were killed and Paris and other European authorities continued to search for an eighth terrorist who is the suspected mastermind of the assault.

MEMRI founder Yigal Carmon said the threats should be seen as a clear warning to "stay away."

ISIS' ideology is different from its parent group al-Qaeda, which sought to draw the West into a war on Muslim soil, Carmon said. ISIS is no friend to the West but it's first priority is to govern according to its medieval version of Islam, and to battle its near enemies — al-Qaeda, moderate Sunni Muslims, and Shiites, Carmon said.

The video "and attacks on the West (are) a reaction to the Western attacks upon them," Carmon said.

Reuters noted that the militants included another warning to France in the video: "We have decided to negotiate with you in the trenches and not in the hotels."

U.S. authorities are examining and seeking to authenticate the video, but they've received no specific or credible threat against the United States, said a federal law enforcement official said Monday. At the same time, said the official, who is not authorized to comment publicly, federal investigators are increasing physical and electronic surveillance in some of the highest profile cases among hundreds of Islamic-State-inspired suspects they are monitoring across the country.

For the past year, a U.S.-led coalition has been conducting airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Iraqi intelligence officials had warned members of the U.S.-led coalition that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Bagdhadi had ordered attacks on coalition countries the day before the Paris attacks, according to the Associated Press. The warning contained no specifics but said the threat mentioned possible bombings and other attacks in Western countries, Iran and Russia.

Carmon said the warnings and threats should be taken seriously because "no country is prepared for an attack at any moment at any target."

"It can happen in America just like in France," he said. "But any minority prays that America will be led by its moral principles and not by its self-interest, which says (Islamic State) is not against us, forget about it."

Contributing: Kevin Johnson in Washington