Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said that it is too soon for Moscow to give an assessment of a newly-formed Islamic coalition against terrorism.
Saudi Arabia said this morning that 34 mainly Islamic countries have joined a new military alliance to fight terrorism.
"It will take a little more time to analyze this decision," Peskov told reporters this morning.
"We don't have detailed information yet that we would need, i.e. who has joined the coalition, what aims it has declared, in what way will it oppose extremism. Hypothetically speaking, then of course joint efforts in the fight against extremism in its various forms is a positive step but in order to give an assessment we need to understand the details."
This just in from AFP: a judicial source says that a man linked to the November 13 attacks in Paris has been arrested.
The talks in Moscow between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov have gone on for more than three hours, RIA Novosti points out.
The main topic on the agenda is the Syrian crisis.
Kerry is expected to meet with Russian President Putin after the meeting with Lavrov.
Two people have been arrested in France in connection with a January terrorist attack in a kosher supermarket in Paris, French media is reporting.
The reports say that Claude Hermant, who is already in custody, and his partner are being questioned in relation to weapons used by Amedy Coulibaly, the attacker who held shoppers hostage in the Hyper Cacher supermarket. Coulibaly pledged allegiance to IS at the time of the attack, which came days after other militants targeted the offices of a French satirical magazine, killing 11 people.
A source close to the investigation told AFP that the weapons had allegedly passed through a company managed by Hermant's partner.
Hermant is already in custody in relation to a separate weapons trafficking case, the reports say.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.