First Chinese Man Reported To Have Gone To Syria To Fight IS
A young Chinese man, Pan Yang from Sichuan Province, has become the first Chinese citizen known to have traveled to Syria to fight alongside Kurdish militias against the IS group, according to the Huaxi Metropolitan Daily newspaper.
Pan's sister, who has called for him to come home, said that her elderly parents had no idea where Syria is or what the IS group is.
Pan Yang told the BBC's Chinese service last week that he was fighting alongside the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG).
Swiss police are searching Geneva for suspects in connection with the Paris attacks, AFP is reporting.
Reuters reports this additional information from Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova's press briefing this morning.
Zakharova said that there was still no agreement among global powers on the lists of Syrian opposition and terrorist groups.
"Unfortunately, the tempo of this work on the list of the opposition which could be presented in talks with Damascus, as well as on the list of terrorists, is not at the speed...which was presumed after the Vienna meetings," she said.
Zakharova was referring to an agreement made in November that Jordan would coordinate efforts to compile a common list of terrorist groups in Syria.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reiterated this demand in his phone call on December 9 with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.
AFP's Ankara correspondent Fulya Ozerkan tweets that the first lot of German troops and aircraft has taken off for Turkey as part of a deployment in the anti-IS fight.
The U.S. commando force that President Barack Obama is dispatching to Iraq to conduct clandestine raids against the IS group does not fit neatly into a picture of the U.S. military strategy for defeating the militants, AP writes.
AP notes that usually, this sort of commando force works clandestinely and its existence would normally be classified.
"In this case the Pentagon lifted that veil to bolster its argument that the U.S. military strategy is building momentum at a time when its critics claim the Islamic State is winning," AP suggests.
From our news desk:
Dutch Court Convicts Six Muslim Men In IS Recruiting Network
A Dutch court has convicted six Muslim men of membership in a terrorist network that recruits youngsters to fight in Syria as Islamic State militants or part of other extremist groups.
The six were among eight men and a woman from The Hague convicted on December 10 of various crimes linked to a network of radical Muslims.
At a heavily guarded courtroom in Amsterdam, judges issued sentences of up to six years against those convicted.
Presiding Judge Rene Elkerbout said the organization "has contributed on a large scale to a climate in which youngsters felt called upon to go to Syria and fight."
IS Recaptures Two Areas In Central Syria, Activists Say
The IS group has recaptured two areas in central Syria from government forces, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) says.
"Syrian army units withdrew from all of the Maheen and Hawareen areas after an [IS] attack," SOHR head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
Maheen and Hawareen are in Syria's Homs province.
A local government representative from the nearby Christian town of Sadad said that the Syrian army is trying to secure an exit route for government forces fighting IS.
Hassan Ridha, a pro-Assad activist who says he is based in Tartous in Syria, posted these images whcih claim to show the IS group on the eastern outskirts of Maheen.
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir has said that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must either "leave through negotiations" or be forcibly ousted.
Al-Jubeir made his comments to reporters in Riyadh during a two-day meeting of Syrian opposition groups aimed at forming a united front ahead of peace talks with Assad.
Two Iraqis Detained In Finland Over IS Camp Speicher Mass Killing
Two Iraqi men have been detained in Finland on suspicion of terrorism-related murders in Iraq, Finnish media is reporting.
The two men were detained Tuesday, the head of Finland's National Bureau of Investigations, Jari Raty, told reporters at a press conference today. However they were not interviewed until today because of a shortage of interpreters.
The two men are suspected of 11 killings in Iraq in June 2014 as part of a mass killing carried out by IS at Camp Speicher near Tikrit, in which militants killed unarmed Iraqi Air Force cadets.
The suspects, both 23-year-old Iraqi men, arrived in Finland in September.
They allegedly shot Iraqi army cadets who had been tied up and made to lie on the ground.
The IS group has released 25 Assyrian Christian hostages, Kurdish news site Basnews is reporting now.
The Assyrians were abducted by IS in February when IS militants attacked Christian villages near Tel Tamir in Syria's Hasakah province.
The hostages were released yesteday. They are all males, including two boys aged seven and nine, according to an Assyrian source.