Dozens Injured, Killed In Strike On Syria Fuel Market
The Local Coordination Committees, a Syrian opposition group that monitors the conflict, has said that three Russian air strikes on a gas market in Maaret al-Nasan in Idlib province have killed and wounded dozens of people.
Rami Abdurrahman of the Britain-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that at least 35 people had been killed or wounded.
According to AP, the market mostly sells diesel fuel brought from areas under IS control.
Lebanese Prime Minister Tammam Salam has welcomed the formation of a 34-nation, Saudi-led Islamic coalition against the IS group.
The French Education Ministry has suspended a 45-year-old French kindergarten teacher after he invented a story about being stabbed by an IS militant yesterday, TheLocal.fr news website reports.
"There has been speculation the man may have been trying to get out of a school inspection," TheLocal writes.
Le Monde pointed out that he was at the school unusually early, telling authorities he was stabbed at around 7am, long before most teachers and pupils would arrive.
He also hadn't appeared to take CCTV footage into account, with counter-terror police quickly realizing that no apparent intruder had been on the scene.
The teacher also reported that his "attacker" had yelled "This is for Daesh" (another word for Isis), a strange choice of words considering that the group has said in the past it would cut the tongues off anyone using it.
Will Stevens, the spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, tweets that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry found time today for a stroll down Moscow's Arbat Street.
Kerry is in Moscow for talks on the Syrian crisis with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, which have gone on for over three hours.
Almost a quarter -- 23 percent -- of Russians believe that the main global event of 2015 is the bombing of IS militants in Syria and the Syrian conflict, according to a poll conducted by the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM), RIA Novosti reports.
Some 13 percent of those polled said that the main global event of 2015 was the strengthening of global terrorism and the uniting of countries to fight terror.
But some 38 percent of those polled were not able to say what they considered to be the main global event this year.
AFP has tweeted this image of a Syrian child injured after reported Syrian government air strikes on the rebel-held town of al-Nashabiyah east of Damascus.
A court in the Russian town of Istra has found a 54-year-old man guilty of fighting alongside the IS group in Syria, according to Life News, a news website with links to Russia's intelligence services.
The defendant, Vakhid Saryiev, has been sentenced to four years and two months in prison.
Saryiev told Life News that he first traveled to Istanbul in Turkey in late 2013 and then paid $25 to cross the border into Syria.
Saryiev said that he underwent military training in Raqqa. But at the start of 2015 he went back to Russia and settled in Istra.
"I was tired, I guess, of it," Saryiev said.
Twenty days after arriving in Istra, Saryiev was arrested. He pleaded guilty to the charges.
The UK's Ministry of Defense have reported that British forces are continuing to carry out air operations against IS in Syria and Iraq.
A particular focus for recent attacks has been northern Iraq, the Ministry says.
Two British Typhoon FGR4s on December 11 provided close air support to Kurdish Peshmerga militia fighters near the IS-controlled town of Mosul and destroyed an IS heavy machine gun position that was firing on the Peshmerga. Two more Paveway IV guided bombs were used against IS militants attacking Kurdish troops.
The terror attack alert level in Belgium is to remain at level 3 -- the second-highest level -- until the end of the year, local media are reporting. The threat level means that an attack is not considered imminent but still serious.
Belgium lowered the threat level from the highest possible, 4, at the end of November.
A German Salafist preacher has been arrested this morning on suspicion of supporting an affiliate of the IS group in Syria.
Sven Lau, a 35-year-old convert, was arrested in Mönchengladbach in North Rhine-Westphalia.
German police suspect that he is the main contact person for a group named Jamwa in Germany's Rhine region and that he has recruited two militants and supported the terrorist group financially and logistically.