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A woman rests near rubble in the Syrian town of Darat Izza in Aleppo Province on February 28.
A woman rests near rubble in the Syrian town of Darat Izza in Aleppo Province on February 28.

Live Blog: Tracking Islamic State

Follow all of the latest developments as they happen.

Latest News For February 29

-- The United States Army's elite Delta Force is on the verge of beginning operations to target, capture or kill top IS operatives in Iraq, after several weeks of covert preparation, an administration official with direct knowledge of the force's activities told CNN.

-- Syrian government forces have regained control of a road used by the army to access Aleppo, after making advances against Islamic State fighters, a monitoring group and state television reported.


-- Authorities in Iraq say the death toll from a double bombing at a market in Baghdad’s Shi’ite neighborhood of Sadr City rose to 73 on February 29 after several critically wounded victims died overnight.

-- Tajik media are reporting that a woman known to be the second wife of Gulmurod Halimov, the fugitive Tajik colonel who defected to the IS group, has left for Syria along with the couple's four young children.

-- The UN is poised to begin delivering aid to people living in besieged areas of Syria, making use of a truce brokered by the United States and Russia. The first deliveries are planned for Feb. 29, with aid due to reach about 150,000 Syrians in besieged areas over the next five days.

-- A truce negotiated between Syrian rebels and the government has caused a dramatic decrease in airstrikes around rebel-held territory, but there were few celebrations, with many residents suspecting a trick, CNN report.

* NOTE: Live blog posts are time-stamped according to Central European Time (CET).

13:21 16.12.2015

Eight people believed to be linked to the IS group, including seven foreign nationals, have been detained in Turkey's southeastern province ofGaziantep, the Doğan news agency has reported, according to Today's Zaman.

13:42 16.12.2015

Austria has arrested two people with suspected links to the November 13 attacks in Paris.

14:13 16.12.2015

AFP has more on the reports that two people have been arrested in Austria with suspected links to the November 13 Paris attacks.

Robert Holzleitner,a spokesman for prosecutors in Salzburg, told AFP that two people "coming from the Middle East" were arrested at the weekend at a center for refugees in Salzburg.

"Indications of a possible link to the Paris attacks are currently being investigated," Holzleitner said.

An Austrian newspaper, the Kronen-Zeitung, reported that the two were French citizens who entered Austria in October with members of the group who carried out the Paris attacks.The two had reportedly been posing as refugees and had fake Syrian passports.

14:26 16.12.2015

The UK's Royal Navy has tweeted that the HMS Defender is joining the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle on anti-IS operations.

According to the Royal Navy website, HMS Defender is the fifth of the British Navy's six Type-45 destroyers. She returned from her maiden deployment to the Middle East a year ago and has now been deployed again.

14:40 16.12.2015

Russia says that in the past 24 hours its air strikes in Syria have destroyed a convoy of fuel trucks used by "terrorists."

Speaking to reporters in Syria's Latakia province, Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said the air strikes by Su-34 jets had hit the convoy in near Deir al-Zor city and destroyed 94 fuel tank trucks.

Another Su-34 had destroyed a convoy of 15 fuel tankers in an area controlled by "terrorists" in Hasakah province, Konashenkov said, adding that the jet had been on "free search."

14:50 16.12.2015

Russia Praises Its 'Openness' Over Syria Strikes, Slams 'Inaccurate' Foreign Media

Russia's Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov has commented on what it describes as the "informational openness" of the Russian air campaign in Syria.

Konashenkov also slammed what he said were inaccurate reports in the foreign media regarding indiscriminate air strikes by Russian planes.

"From individual members of the so-called anti-IS coalition we regularly hear criticism of our air strikes against terrorist infrastructure targets in Syria, and there is even a pattern -- the more accurately we strike the terrorists, the more noise there is in the foreign press with references to some anonymous sources about Russian air strikes allegedly being non-selective," Konashenkov said.

"Today, we are the only army in the world which has shown in detail, how and with what Russian high precision weapons on planes and ships we are hitting terrorist targets. At the same time, at best we only know of the results of the anti-IS coalition operations from the words of a few officials."

14:57 16.12.2015

Kenyan police are holding a Kenyan woman suspected of having links to the IS group after she was deported from India, according to Kenya's The Nation news site.

Amina Mwaiz Muange had worked in the United Arab Emirates and had then accompanied her employers to India, where she was arrested.

"Earlier in the year while in Abu Dhabi, Amina had started visiting social media sites with links to IS in an attempt to find a way to go to Syria. In the course of this search she got in touch with IS supporters in India, Afghanistan, Burundi, Kenya and South Africa with whom she kept regular contact," says a government report seen by the Nation.co.ke.

15:04 16.12.2015

Britain's Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond has said that there have been no reports of civilian casualties as a result of the UK's air strikes against IS targets in Iraq and Syria.

15:08 16.12.2015

Russian airstrikes are systematically targeting the infrastructure of Turkoman areas of Latakia province in northwest Syria to prevent their return, Ahmet Arnavut, a senior Turkoman rebel commander who controls Turkoman forces in the Bayırbucak region, has said.

Arnavut said that the strikes had hit mosques, schools, roads and homes belonging to Turkomans, a Turkic ethnic group living in Syria.

"Within a month, Russia did what the regime could not since the beginning of the war," Arnavut told Turkey's Anadolu Agency.

"They are hitting vacant villages with bombers and helicopters. They are sending a message to Turkmen by destroying houses where no one lives - 'There is nothing left for you here. Don't think about returning'."

15:14 16.12.2015

Russia's Defense Ministry says that in the past 24 hours it has carried out 59 sorties against 212 targets in Aleppo, Idlib, Latakia, Hama, Homs, Hasaka and Raqqa provinces.

"The terrorists continue to suffer losses in terms of manpower and materiel," the Ministry wrote in a post on Facebook.

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