U.S. President Barack Obama, in a rare primetime speech designed to reassure a jittery nation, vowed that America will destroy the Islamic State (IS) group and hunt down its followers at home or abroad.

    Facing questions about his leadership and strategy, Obama harnessed the highest trappings of U.S. power to calm a country put on edge by a rampage in California that killed 14 people.

    “After so much war, many Americans are asking whether we are confronted by a cancer that has no immediate cure,” Obama said in a solemn address from the Oval Office, adding that the San Bernardino massacre was evidence of an “evolving” and increasingly homegrown threat.

    As a father of two daughters, Obama said, he could imagine himself or his kin in San Bernardino or Paris.

    “Here’s what I want you to know,” he said. “The threat from terrorism is real, but we will overcome it. We will destroy ISIL and any other organization that tries to harm us.”

    “Our military will continue to hunt down terrorist plotters in any country where it is necessary.”

    Obama urged Muslims in America and around the world to “decisively and unequivocally reject the hateful ideology that groups like ISIL and al-Qaida promote.”

    He detailed a multi-pronged strategy against the Islamic State group that will rely as much on community action, high-tech and countering propaganda as military force.

    It is just the third time Obama has delivered an Oval Office address — used by presidents since Harry Truman to convey resolve in the face of a national crisis.

    A senior administration official said the speech was designed to convey the seriousness with which Obama was taking the shootings in San Bernardino, which are being investigated as a terror attack.

    On Wednesday, a young married Muslim couple dropped off their 6-month-old daughter with her grandmother, donned tactical gear and opened fire on an office party full of his co-workers.

    Obama said the pair “had gone down the dark path of radicalization.” But he added that there was “no evidence that the killers were directed by a terrorist organization overseas or that they were part of a broader conspiracy here at home.”

    Both shooters died in a hail of police bullets a few hours later, leaving questions about how, when and why they may have become radicalized.

    “If we’re to succeed in defeating terrorism, we must enlist Muslim communities as some of our strongest allies rather than push them away through suspicion and hate,” Obama said.

    But he also pressed America’s feuding political factions to rally together.

    According to a new CNN/ORC poll, 68 percent of Americans say the U.S. military response to the Islamic State group has not been aggressive enough. Conducted before the shootings, the poll also found that 60 percent disapprove of Obama’s handling of terrorism. (SD-Agencies)