Germany is deporting an Australian for fighting against IS in Syria, our news desk reports:
Germany is deporting an Australian man who joined a Kurdish militia group to fight the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, Sydney's foreign ministry said December 5.
Australian media had reported that Ashley Dyball was detained in Germany after travelling to Europe for a break from fighting with a Kurdish group known as YPG.
Dyball, who also uses the alias Mitchell Scott, posted on Facebook December 4 that he had been charged as a terrorist and was being sent to the Eisenhuettenstadt Detention Center near the German border with Poland. He said he will be deported to Australia on December 6.
The Brisbane man has been fighting against IS since early 2015. Two other Australians have been killed fighting with YPG this year.
It is not clear whether Dyball will be subject to penalties under Australian laws designed to punish people who fought with IS, rather than those who fought against the militant group. (AFP, dpa)
The latest from our news desk on the California attacks:
WASHINGTON -- U.S. officials say the woman who, along with her husband, allegedly shot and killed 14 at a holiday party in southern California had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State militant group.
Federal law enforcement officials were quoted by AP and CNN on December 4 as saying that Tashfeen Malik, a Pakistani native who moved to the U.S. in 2014 on a fiancee visa, had posted a statement on Facebook pledging support to the radical Islamic group.
The White House had no immediate comment on the reports and police officials in California were to hold a news briefing later in the day.
Officials say Malik and her husband, Syed Farook, used automatic weapons, handguns, and pipe bombs in the attack, which occurred at a social services agency in San Bernadino, about 100 kilometers east of Los Angeles.
At least 21 people were wounded in the incident.
The couple was killed hours later after a car chase and fierce gun battle with police.
Farook, who was born in Chicago to Pakistani parents and raised in southern California, was a 28-year-old health inspector for the county.
He had attended the holiday party and then reportedly left agitated before returning with his wife, wearing tactical vests and heavily armed.
Authorities have said that the couple fired as many as 75 rounds into the room where the holiday party was being held before fleeing and they had more than 1,600 rounds left when they were killed.
Police later found 12 pipe bombs, tools to make more explosives, and well over 4,500 rounds at the townhouse they were renting.
Officials have said that while the killings may have been inspired by the Islamic State group, there was no evidence that the radical group had directed the attack.
The shooting was the deadliest in the United States since 2012.
The AP quoted an unnamed official as saying Malik made her posts under an alias and deleted them before she and Farook went on their rampage.
Another U.S. official was quoted as saying that Malik expressed "admiration" for the extremist group's leader -- Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi -- on Facebook under an alias account.
But the official said there was no sign that anyone affiliated with the Islamic State communicated back with her and there was no evidence of any operational instructions being conveyed to her.
Malik had been living in Saudi Arabia when she married Farook two years ago.
The shooting has sparked heated debate in the United States about the wide availability of guns and the prevalence of mass shootings as well as increased fears that people who are radicalized or supportive of Islamic State could enter the United States alongside refugees from Syria or elsewhere.
Islamic State leaders, whose fighters have seized swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria as part of an effort to create a theocratic state called a caliphate, have urged sympathizers worldwide to commit violence in their countries.
Belgian police have posted information on their website about the two additional suspects sought in connection with the November 13 Paris attacks.
The two men used fake Belgian identity cards in the names of Samir Bouzid and Soufiane Kayal.
Soufiane Kayal's fake ID was used to rent a house in Auvelais in Belgium. The house was raided by police on November 26.
The fake ID in the name of Samir Bouzid was used four days after the Paris attacks on November 17 at 18:00 in a Western Union branch in the Brussels region, to transfer a sum of 750 euros to Hasna Aitboulahcen, the cousin of the Paris attacks mastermind Abdelhamid Abaaoud. Both Aitboulahcen and Abaaoud were killed in a police raid on an apartment in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis on November 18.
Closed circuit TV images were recorded during the money transfer, and have been posted on the police website.
The two men are armed and dangerous, the police warn.
Belgium Appeals For Public Help In Search For Two Paris Suspects
Belgian federal prosecutors have appealed to the public in the search for two men who traveled in a rental car with key Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam to Hungary in September, Reuters reports.
Police believe that the two men may have links to the Paris attacks.
Abdeslam was in Paris at the time of the attacks. Federal prosecutors say he traveled twice to Budapest in September in a rental car.
On September 9 he was stopped at the Austria-Hungary border in a Mercedes accompanied by two men who had fake Belgian ID cards with the names Samir Bouzid and Soufiane Kayal.
Abdeslam is still on the loose. A senior European counterterrorism official told CNN late yesterday that his trail has gone cold.
Russia's Defense Ministry has given a press briefing about the past week's air strikes by Russian war planes in Syria.
A ministry spokesman said that in the past week Russia has flown 431 sorties from the Hmeymim airbase in Latakia and carried out 1,458 "pinpoint strikes on terrorist objectives" in the provinces of Aleppo, Idlib, Latakia, Hama, Homs, Deir Ezzor and Raqqa.
All of the Russian bombers were escorted by Sukhoi Su-30SM fighters, the Ministry said.
AFP's Danny Kemp has tweeted these pictures of the two new suspects the Belgian police are now hunting for in connection to the November 13 Paris attacks.
The two men used fake Belgian IDs to help suspect Salah Abdeslam travel to Hungary in September.
Peter Spiegel of the Financial Times adds this on the report that the Belgian prosecutor has said two more Paris attacks suspects are being sought.
The prosecutor says that four suspects are at large.
Suspect Salah Abdeslam traveled twice to Hungary in September in a rental car and on one occasion was stopped between Hungary and Austria, traveling with two people carrying fake Belgian IDs.