Police in Bosnia have detained 11 people suspected of links with the IS group in Syria and Iraq, AP reports.
Tajikistan's Foreign Ministry has said that it has not yet considered the question of whether to join the Islamic coalition against the IS group proposed by Saudi Arabia.
"Tajikistan is currently thoroughly considering Saudi Arabia's proposal on this matter, and after that a decision will be made," the Foreign Ministry told RFE/RL's Tajik service.
The Foreign Ministry's comments come a day after the pan-Arabic newspaper Asharq Alawsat reported that Tajikistan was considering joining the Saudi-led Islamic coalition.
Saudi Arabia announced the formation of a coalition on December 15.
Reuters has another quote from Sabah al-Numani, spokesman for Iraq's Counter-Terrorism units, who says that there is fighting in the neighborhoods around the government complex in the center of Ramadi.
"Our forces are advancing toward the government complex in the center of Ramadi," Numani said. "The fighting is in the neighborhoods around the complex, with support from the air force."
Iraqi intelligence estimates the number of Islamic State fighters entrenched in the center of Ramadi, capital of Anbar province, at between 250 and 300.
Analyst Michael Horowitz has this to say about the Iraq army's push this morning to retake the center of Ramadi from IS militants: IS are likely to put up a tough fight and to have prepared counter-attacks including booby traps.
The BBC has more on the reports that Iraqi forces have now advanced into the center of Ramadi city.
The BBC is quoting the spokesman for Iraq's Counter-Terrorism Service, Sabah al-Numani, as saying that Iraqi troops and militiamen are advancing toward the main government complex in the center of the town.
Ramadi fell to IS in May.
Nine Students Killed In IS Shelling In Deir al-Zor
IS militants have shelled a school district in a government-held area of Deir al-Zor city in eastern Syria this morning, killing at least nine students and wounding around 20 other people, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
SOHR said that the death toll was likely to rise.
Syrian state news agency SANA is reporting that nine female students were killed in the shelling of a school in the Harabesh neighborhood.
Russian federal Drug Control Service Director Viktor Ivanov has said that IS is receiving from $200- $500 million a year from sales of heroin from Afghanistan in Europe.
Most of the heroin is trafficked via Turkey, Ivanov claimed.
Iraqi forces have advanced into the center of Ramadi, the capital of Iraq's western province of Anbar, according to an Iraqi security official, AFP have just reported.
George Brandis, Australia’s attorney-general, has warned that the IS group is seeking to create a “distant caliphate” in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation.
“[IS] has ambitions to elevate its presence and level of activity in Indonesia, either directly or through surrogates,” he told The Australian newspaper.
“You’ve heard the expression the ‘distant caliphate’? [IS] has a declared intention to establish caliphates beyond the Middle East, provincial caliphates in effect. It has identified Indonesia as a location of its ambitions.”
Sky News reports this morning that it has uncovered evidence that Russia may be covering up the true number of military deaths in Syria.
Sky claims that Moscow is carrying out military funerals on the quiet and withholding information about servicemen's deaths.
Following up on information passed to us by investigative bloggers led by Ruslan Leviev, we travelled to a small village near the Belarus border called Paltso to investigate the death of a 27-year-old special-forces soldier called Fyodor Zhuravlyov.
He was buried in the village cemetery in a quiet ceremony three weeks ago and his parents said the authorities had not told them what had happened to their son.
Yet we learned that it was "common-knowledge" on our visit to the village that Zhuravlyov had died in Syria.