US President Barack Obama has hailed Congress for backing his plan to arm moderate Syrian rebels and France for signing off on air strikes in Iraq, victories for his campaign to destroy the Islamic State group.
US warplanes meanwhile hit an Islamic State group training camp in Iraq in their first strike not directly supporting Iraqi or Kurdish forces as Washington cranked up pressure on the Sunni extremist group.
Hitting back in the propaganda war, the jihadists posted their latest video of a Western hostage, British journalist John Cantlie.
Unlike previous grisly postings of two American journalists and a British aid worker being beheaded, Cantlie was only shown speaking to camera in the style of a news report.
In a rare moment of bipartisanship in divided Washington, the Senate voted 78 to 22 to endorse Obama's plan, already passed by the House of Representatives, to arm rebels to take on IS in conjunction with air strikes the president has pledged to carry out inside Syria.
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Minutes after the vote, Obama appeared on television, keen to claim a swift victory for his strategy, as polls show Americans support striking IS but are not sure that it will work.
"I want to thank leaders in Congress for the speed and seriousness with which they approached this urgent issue," said Obama.
"These terrorists thought they could frighten us, or intimidate us, or cause us to shrink from the world," he said.
"But today they're learning the same hard lesson of petty tyrants and terrorists who have gone before."
French President Francois Hollande said that France would join the US in conducting air strikes against Islamic State - but only in Iraq.
"As soon as we have identified targets, we will act... within a short timeframe," he vowed.
Obama praised the move by one of America's "oldest and closest allies" which was a boost for his claims to be building a broad international coalition to take on IS.
