DHAKA: US president Barack Obama issued a somber warning that the kidnapping of Nigerian girls and sectarian conflicts worldwide are a sign that ‘we have not extinguished man's darkest impulses’.

Obama accepted a humanitarian award from director Steven Spielberg at the University of Southern California’s Shoah Foundation, a Holocaust museum founded by Spielberg after he made the film ‘Schindler’s List’.

Obama spoke about a variety of global conflicts including Ukraine, Syria, and the kidnapping of more than 200 Nigerian girls by the Boko Haram Islamist militant group.

‘We only need to look at today’s headlines: The devastation of Syria, the murders and kidnappings in Nigeria, the sectarian conflicts, the tribal conflicts to see that we have not yet extinguished man's darkest impulses,’ Obama said, reports The Straits Times.

BDST: 1401 HRS, MAY 08, 2014