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A woman rests near rubble in the Syrian town of Darat Izza in Aleppo Province on February 28.
A woman rests near rubble in the Syrian town of Darat Izza in Aleppo Province on February 28.

Live Blog: Tracking Islamic State

Follow all of the latest developments as they happen.

Latest News For February 29

-- The United States Army's elite Delta Force is on the verge of beginning operations to target, capture or kill top IS operatives in Iraq, after several weeks of covert preparation, an administration official with direct knowledge of the force's activities told CNN.

-- Syrian government forces have regained control of a road used by the army to access Aleppo, after making advances against Islamic State fighters, a monitoring group and state television reported.


-- Authorities in Iraq say the death toll from a double bombing at a market in Baghdad’s Shi’ite neighborhood of Sadr City rose to 73 on February 29 after several critically wounded victims died overnight.

-- Tajik media are reporting that a woman known to be the second wife of Gulmurod Halimov, the fugitive Tajik colonel who defected to the IS group, has left for Syria along with the couple's four young children.

-- The UN is poised to begin delivering aid to people living in besieged areas of Syria, making use of a truce brokered by the United States and Russia. The first deliveries are planned for Feb. 29, with aid due to reach about 150,000 Syrians in besieged areas over the next five days.

-- A truce negotiated between Syrian rebels and the government has caused a dramatic decrease in airstrikes around rebel-held territory, but there were few celebrations, with many residents suspecting a trick, CNN report.

* NOTE: Live blog posts are time-stamped according to Central European Time (CET).

11:04 20.11.2015

The Paris prosecutor's office says that a third body has been found in the apartment raided by police during a search for suspects in the November 13 Paris attacks, AP are reporting.

The office has said that the body is that of a woman but her identity is not yet clear.

10:42 20.11.2015

Could Salah Abdeslam, the suspected terrorist who remains the target of a massive police hunt after the November 13 attacks in Paris, also be on the run from IS?

Investigators are increasingly led to believe that Abdeslam panicked on November 13 and did not carry out the grisly assignments given him by IS, according to The Independent.

Abdeslam had wandered around Paris for seven hours on the night of November 13 and police have traced a phone call he made at 10:30 p.m. while the massacre at the Bataclan stadium was under way. He had asked friends to drive from Brussels to pick him up.

"Nothing [in Abdeslam’s movements] answers the description of a pre-planned escape," one French police source told The Independent.

"It is possible he panicked or chickened out of killing himself. It is possible that he was disgusted by what he had been involved in or that his explosive suicide belt failed to detonate."

10:35 20.11.2015

Germany's intelligence chief has warned of a "terrorist world war," the BBC reports.

Hans-Georg Maassen, head of Germany's domestic intelligence agency, told the BBC that IS had made Europe its enemy and European countries had to "assume something like Paris can happen any time."

10:31 20.11.2015

The Independent has obtained the text of a draft United Nations Security Council resolution to declare war against the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria and Iraq.

The resolution authorizes "all necessary measures" against IS in Syria and Iraq, could be adopted in days.

The text of the draft resolution, shared with the The Independent, calls on member states "with the capacity to do so" to “take all necessary measures, in compliance with international law, in particular international human rights, refugee and humanitarian law, on the territory under the control of Isil [IS] in Syria and Iraq, to redouble and co-ordinate their efforts to prevent and suppress terrorist acts committed specifically by Isil… and to eradicate the safe haven they have established in Iraq and Syria."

The draft resolution goes on to say that, by "its violent extremist ideology, its terrorist acts, its continued gross systematic and widespread attacks directed against civilians,", IS "constitutes a global and unprecedented threat to international peace and security."

18:37 19.11.2015

This ends our live blogging of the aftermath of the Paris attacks for November 19. Be sure to check back here tomorrow for our continuing coverage.

18:24 19.11.2015

In the wake of last week's Paris attacks, the Refugee Council -- a British NGO that works with refugees -- has said that the IS group wants Europe to turn its back on asylum seekers.

The Paris attacks led to debates over whether terrorists have been able to exploit the refugee crisis by traveling to Europe alongside genuine asylum seekers.

But demonizing refugees "could also risk playing right into Isis's hands," the Refugee Council's Lisa Doyle writes in The Guardian, using an alternative acronym for IS.

"[The] idea of Syrian refugees finding a safe home in Europe would not go down well with the “clash of civilisations” narrative that Isis desperately attempts to propagate," Doyle adds.

"A hostile, unwelcoming Europe that pulls up the drawbridge and leaves refugees to die would be much more convenient."

IS has previously warned Syrians against leaving its "caliphate" -- its name for the lands under its control -- saying that those seeking asylum in Europe were committing a "dangerous major sin."

17:55 19.11.2015

A lawyer who represented the IS militant suspected of masterminding the Paris attacks has talked to the Wall Street Journal, saying that Abdelhamid Abaaoud had been repeatedly arrested for violent crimes around Brussels.

Abaaoud had also served time in at least three prisons, his lawyer Alexandre Chateau said.

Abaaoud was arrested in December 2010 for an attempted break-in to a parking garage. His accomplice was allegedly Salah Abdesalam, the man who is currently being hunted in connection with the Paris attacks.

Chateau last saw Abaaoud in 2013. He had grown a beard and become more religious, Chateau said.

Religion "became a way for him to break out of his pattern of petty crime, aggression, theft...He didn't show signs of radicalization or that he would be implicated in terrorist acts of that he would fight overseas."

The Paris prosecutor confirmed earlier today that Abaaoud had been killed in the November 18 raid on an apartment block in a northern Paris suburb.

17:38 19.11.2015

In a speech to parliament, Belgium's Prime Minister Charles Michel has rejected criticism of his country's security services over the Paris attacks.

"I do not accept the criticisms which were aimed at denigrating the work of our security services," Michel said.

French President Francois Hollande said the attacks in Paris, which killed 129 people, had been "planned in Syria, prepared and organized in Belgium."

But Michel said that it was Belgian intelligence that led to the police raid on November 18 in a Paris suburb that killed Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected mastermind of last week's attacks.

The Saint-Denis raid, conducted with "intelligence provided by Belgian teams," had prevented another attack, the Belgian Prime Minister added.

17:15 19.11.2015

France did not receive any information from other European countries to suggest that Abdelhamid Abaaoud had entered Europe until November 16, two days after the deadly attacks in Paris, French Interir Minister Bernard Cazeneuve has said.

"It was only on November 16, after the Paris attacks, that an intelligence service outside Europe signaled that he had been aware of [Abaaoud's] presence in Greece," Cazeneuve said.


17:11 19.11.2015

The BBC's Julia Macfarlane tweets that a police operation is currently underway in Charleville in France, and there are reports that an explosion has been heard. It is unclear if the operation is related to the Paris attacks.

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