Two pro-government militia fighters have been killed in clashes with Kurdish police in northeast Syria, Kurdish and security sources have said, AFP report.
The two fighters were from Syria's National Defense Forces (NDF), a pro-government militia. They were killed late December 16 in a clash with the Kurdish Asayish police force in Qamishli.
The two factions usually collaborate to fight against jihadist groups.
Talks between Russia and the United States have led to improved cooperation on Syria, Alexei Pushkov, head of the Russian parliament's foreign affairs committee, has said.
"You will recall that previously, the parties met and talked but nothing came of it. Now it has been determined that there is a common goal," Pushkov told a Russian television channel.
Financial difficulties are driving Syrian women into the arms of foreign fighters in northern Syria, according to local residents and officials of the Islamic courts, Syria Deeply reports.
Residents in camps set up for internally displaced residents in rural Idlib and Latakia told Syria Deeply that women whose husbands have died fighting in the civil war are marrying foreign fighters because they have few other options of finding financial security. “Widowed women, including my own wife, agree to marry us foreign fighters, because their prospects are not great – Syrian men do not like to marry widowed women,” said Abu Abdulrahman al-Belgique, a foreign fighter with the Turkistan Islamic Party.
The Syrian activist group Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently, which documents life in IS-controlled Raqqa, tweeted this message of defiance following the killing of one of its members in the Syrian province of Idlib.
Two other activists from the group were killed in Turkey in October.
German Police on Thursday arrested a Syrian refugee suspected of links to the IS group, a German prosecutor said, the Wall Street Journal is reporting.
Dortmund state prosecutor Sonja Frodermann said the man who had registered as Leeth Abdalhmeed and was born in 1984 had been arrested at the refugee shelter in Unna-Massen Thursday afternoon on suspicion of having links to the Syrian terror organization.
The man “is said to have been active in some form for Islamic State,“ said Frodermann. ”He got arrested this afternoon."
Syrian opposition activists said the man was Leith Abdul Hamid, a mid-ranking IS official from Deir al-Zor province.
From our news desk:
Islamic State Forces Reportedly Gain Territory In Eastern Afghanistan
Fighters pledging loyalty to the Islamic State (IS) extremist group have reportedly overrun new areas in the eastern province of Nangarhar.
The movement by the IS militants has caused many people to flee their homes, Radio Free Afghanistan reports.
There has reportedly been no military action taken against the IS group in Nangarhar, which borders Kabul Province and is not far from the capital city.
The reported advance by IS forces comes just days after the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, John Campbell, said "foreign fighters" from Syria and Iraq had joined with militants in Afghanistan loyal to the IS group and were trying to establish a regional base in Nangarhar.
Afghan officials say they are also trying to track down broadcasts made by a pro-IS radio station, The Voice Of The Caliphate, that have been heard in the region recently.
A powerful rebel group in Aleppo which in the past received weapons from the United States has lashed out at Jordan following reports Amman would include the faction in a list of terror groups it is preparing for upcoming Syria peace talks, NOW Media reports.
The Nour al-DIn al-Zinki group said in a statement on Twitter that Jordan should "review its policy" which it said was akin to that of Syrian intelligence.
Jordan reportedly gave a list of 160 groups to be considered for inclusion on a list of commonly agreed terror groups, according to Russian media, citing an anonymous source in the Russian Foreign Ministry.
A list of groups purportedly on the terror list has been circulating on social media today after a journalist with the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi claimed to have obtained a preliminary list of the groups.
One of the groups listed is Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar, which no longer exists. The group used to be led by a Chechen militant affiliated with the North Caucasian militant group the Caucasus Emirate.
The Syrian opposition hosted by Saudi Arabia elected former Prime Minister Riad Hijab as a coordinator of a body that is expected to lead future peace talks, sources said, Reuters report.
Hijab defected from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government in 2012.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has discussed the issue of resolving the Syrian conflict in a telephone call today with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the Russian Foreign Ministry says.
The phone call comes ahead of a meeting of world powers tomorrow in New York to discuss a peaceful solution to the civil war in Syria.
Kerry visited Moscow earlier this week for talks with Lavrov and Russian President Putin on Syria. Today's phone call was a "development" of that meeting, the Foreign Ministry said.
Alexey Pushkov, head of the State Duma lower house committee for foreign affairs, has said that the United States had been forced into dialogue with Russia over Syria and the fight against the IS group.
"It is a kind of forced decision as they never opted for it. But they might stay in the game only by holding dialogue with Russia," TASS quoted Pushkov as saying.
"The only way out for the United States is to launch a dialogue with Russia."
Pushkov made his comments during a Russian-French inter-parliamentary seminar.