WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama will make a rare prime-time address to the nation Sunday laying out how he will keep Americans safe and defeat the Islamic State group, days after 14 people were shot dead in California.
Obama declared Saturday that the United States “will not be terrorized,” as IS praised the couple behind a mass shooting in San Bernardino as “soldiers” of its self-proclaimed caliphate.
“We are Americans. We will uphold our values—a free and open society,” Obama said in his weekly radio address.
Investigators are combing over evidence and looking into the background of Syed Farook, 28, and his 29-year-old Pakistani wife Tashfeen Malik, the pair who opened fire at a social services center during a holiday party on Wednesday.
The FBI said federal agents raided a property in Riverside, California, but declined to provide the address.
NBC News reported that the FBI had searched the home of Enrique Marquez, a friend of Farook’s who originally bought the assault rifles used in the shooting but who is not considered a suspect.
“I heard the windows crashing, the garage door being torn, doors being broken down, you know, they were forcing their way in,” neighbor Freddy Escamilla told AFP.
In his address from the Oval Office on Sunday at 8:00 pm (0100 GMT Monday), Obama will try to reassure Americans in the wake of the shooting, which the FBI is investigating as a possible act of terrorism.
The massacre, if proven to be terror-related, would be the deadliest such assault on American soil since the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The last time Obama gave an Oval Office address was in August 2010 to mark the end of US combat operations in Iraq.
He will give an update on the investigation and “will also discuss the broader threat of terrorism, including the nature of the threat, how it has evolved, and how we will defeat it,” a White House statement said.
“He will reiterate his firm conviction that ISIL [IS] will be destroyed and that the United States must draw upon our values—our unwavering commitment to justice, equality and freedom—to prevail over terrorist groups that use violence to advance a destructive ideology.”