NOW media has more on this morning's reports that Syrian government forces have captured Jabal al-Nuba in the Latakia mountains.
The advance by the Syrian army backed by Hezbollah and Russian air strikes is a serious blow to rebels, who are facing an "existential threat" in the northern Latakia mountains, NOW writes, quoting the Qatari-owned Alaraby Aljadeed.
NOW writes:
The capture of [Jabal al-Nuba] further to the west threatens the rebels’ hold of the Jabal Akrad [Kurdish mountain] region as well as their supply lines into the Latakia province.
[Jabal al-Nuba] not only overlooks the Aleppo-Latakia highway, it also constitutes a main defensive line for the rebels’ principal Latakia redoubt of Salma, one of the province’s majority Sunni-populated towns.
The FSA first captured Salma in mid-2012 and have since launched a number of operations from the area, which constitutes the insurgent-held front line to Latakia and the Assad family’s hometown of Qardaha.
While the capture of Salma -- which as Alaraby Aljadeed points out is "key to the regime control over the mountain region" -- would be a significant advance for the Syrian government in Latakia, there is an additional incentive for Russia to provide air support to help facilitate the advances.
A number of North Caucasian militant groups have been based in the northern Latakia area -- nicknamed the "Syrian Caucasus" -- around Salma since 2014.
A German man who returned home after fighting alongside IS in Syria for three months says the extremist group tried to recruit him to carry out attacks in Germany, Der Spiegel reports.
Harry S., a 27-year-old from Bremen, is now in investigative custody and has told police everything about his short time in Syria.
He converted to Islam and radicalized while in prison for aggravated theft. In April 2014, he made the journey to Syria.
Harry S. also told investigators that militants from Germany and Austria participated in executions of prisoners taken when IS took over the Syrian city of Palmyra this summer. The former IS fighter says that a notorious German militant named Mohamed Mahmoud told his fellow countrymen, ""Here are some prisoners. Which of you wants to waste them?"
Turkey should pay Russia compensation for the downing of the Russian Su-24 jet near the Syrian border last month, deputy Foreign Minister Alexei Meshkov has said.
Meshov told RIA Novosti that an "attack on a Russian military plane and its crew is a serious crime which cannot but have appropriate consequences."
"The objective facts say that this was a pre-authorized anti-Russian action," Meshkov added, saying that Ankara had "violated the universally recognized international legal principles of the non-use of force in interstate relations as enshrined in the UN Charter and also in the Treaty on the Basic Relations of Russia and Turkey of May 25, 1992."
"Given all of this, the Turkish leadership should -- rather than continuing to deny its responsibility for the incident and against this background to denigrate Russia's legal actions in Syria -- as a minimum do what international legal norms dictate, apologize, pay compensation and provide guarantees that such a failure won't happen again," Meshkov said.
Russia is looking into what sort of contribution the new Saudi-led Islamic coalition can play in the war on terror, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said.
Speaking in a press conference this morning with his Bahraini counterpart, Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, Lavrov said that "of particular importance" was that "part of this initiative will have an ideological dimension, designed to prevent young people from being befuddled by speculation on the great principles of Islam."
Viktor Ivanov, the head of Russia's Federal Drug Control Service has said that IS militants are involved in trafficking drugs from Afghanistan into the EU, pro-Kremlin news site RIA Novosti reports.
"IS is directly involved in the trafficking of these drugs. It receives these drugs at one price -- in Turkey a kilogram of heroin costs around $5,000-7,000 -- and then in Europe it costs around $30,000. Do you understand what the difference is?" Ivanov said.
The Syrian Army and pro-government militias, backed by Russian air strikes, have recaptured the Jabal al-Nuba (the al-Nuba mountain) in northern Latakia province, according to a monitoring group, state media and a pro-Assad news site.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reports this morning that clashes are ongoing between government forces backed by Hezbollah militiamen against rebels backed by Syrian Al-Qaeda affiliate the Al-Nusra Front and that government forces had advanced under Russian air cover to retake Jabal al-Nuba.
Jabal al-Nuba is between the Turkoman (Jabal al-Turkmen) and Kurdish (Jabal al-Akrad) mountains in northeastern Latakia.
The Al-Masdar news site, which is supportive of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, reported that the "Syrian Arab Army’s 103rd Brigade of the Republican Guard -- in coordination with the National Defense Forces (NDF) of Qurdaha, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), and Muqawama Souri (Syrian Resistance)" had been involved in the fighting with the Al-Nusra Front.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova also commented this morning on relations with Turkey following the downing of a Russian Su-24 jet near the Syrian border last month.
"After what we saw -- not just after the downed jet, but after the horrible rhetoric that started from Turkey -- after that, unfortunately, the possibility for constructive dialogue was closed," Zakharova said.
Moscow has not received any questions from Iraq regarding possible interference to civil aviation as a result of Russian missile launches in Syria, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a press briefing this morning.
"We are cooperating closely with Iraq, with the official leadership of that country, on all relevant issues including this one. We have a corresponding information clearing house, so we don't just answer all issues, if they are from Iraq, but we coordinate our actions. So I don't see any further issues here that could arise," Zakharova said.
The flow of Australians seeking to fight alongside groups like IS in Syria and Iraq has plateaued, the head of Australia's national security service has said.
Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) chief Duncan Lewis said that he believed better community awareness was helping.
"There is a current sense of a plateau," Mr Lewis told Australia's Fairfax Media.
"I don't want to be giving any sense that we are through the worst of this. I don't think that's right. But while it had been escalating fast, the sense is that we have plateaued a bit."
Lewis said that a total of 44 Australians have been killed fighting alongside extremist groups, mostly IS.
U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter has traveled to Iraq this morning for an unannounced war zone visit.
Carter is planning to meet with his commanders and with Iraqi leaders, as he looks for ways to broaden the U.S. assistance to Iraq, including what will likely be discussions about America's willingness to send attack helicopters and more troops into the fight, AP reports.
Weather problems are restricting air travel around Baghdad, however, so it is uncertain which Iraqi leaders Carter will be able to meet.