The U.N. Security Council has strongly condemned the fighting and use of heavy weapons by Syrian government troops and armed groups in the Golan Heights, an area that has been designated a demilitarized zone separating Israeli and Syrian forces since 1974, AP is reporting.
A resolution co-sponsored by Russia and the United States and adopted unanimously by the council today calls on parties to the Syrian conflict to halt military activity there.
An attack plot was foiled and two men arrested last week in the French region of Orleans, southwest of Paris, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve has said, AFP reports.
RFE/RL's Radio Farda has published these photos from the December 21 funeral in Lebanon of a senior militant, Samir Kantar, who was killed in an apparent air strike near the Syrian capital, Damascus, a day earlier.
Hizballah leaders blamed Israel for carrying out the strike, in which eight other people died. Kantar had served nearly 30 years in an Israeli prison for killing an Israeli man and his 4-year-old daughter in 1979, but was released in 2008 in a prisoner swap. In the wake of Kantar's death, Israel and Lebanon briefly traded fire.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has called on the Japanese government to do everything possible to secure the release of a Japanese freelance journalist kidnapped by militants in Syria in July and who is still being held hostage.
Jumpei Yasuda was abducted in an area controlled by Al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate the Al-Nusra Front. RSF say that according to information it has received, the militants holding him are threatening to kill him or sell him to another militant group if a ransom is not paid.
“We are very concerned about Jumpei Yasuda’s fate and we call on the Japanese government to do what is needed to save this journalist,” said Benjamin Ismaïl of RSF.
Russia's Defense Ministry has posted these images of Russian forces at the Hmeymim air base in Syria's Latakia province.
A federal judge is delaying a trial for a young Mississippi couple accused of attempting to join the IS group, AP reports.
A lawyer for defendant Jaelyn Delshaun Young of Vicksburg sought the delay so that Young can undergo psychiatric evaluations.
Young and co-defendant Muhammad Dakhlalla pleaded not guilty to charges of aiding terrorists.
Tunisia has extended for another two months a state of emergency imposed after a deadly November bus bombing claimed by the IS group, the presidency said.
The Israeli media is also reporting today's phone call between Russian President Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, although so far reports are citing the Kremlin press service rather than the Israeli Prime Minister's Office as sources for the news.
The Ynet news site points out that the phone call comes after the killing of Hezbollah party leader Samir Kuntar in Damascus early on December 20. The Lebanese group and Syrian government sources said Kuntar was killed in an Israeli air strike while Israel stopped short of confirming responsibility, though it welcomed Kuntar's death.
Ynet says that Arab media are claiming that Israel coordinated with Russia over the killing of Kuntar.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has discussed the Syrian crisis in a telephone call today with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, RIA Novosti reports, citing the Kremlin's press service.
The Israelis initiated the phone call, the Kremlin said.
"Putin stressed that there is no alternative to the launch of intra-Syrian negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations, as well as to the continued and uncompromising fight against the IS group and other extremist groups acting in Syria," the Kremlin said.
"It was agreed that an active dialog will be maintained at various levels, including for the purpose of further coordination of actions on the anti-terrorist front."
Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the Russian Security Council and one of the most senior officials in the country, has talked to government daily Rossiskaya Gazeta (RG) about Russia's new national security strategy.
Patrushev said that the document "spelled out ways to counter the spread of radical ideology, [and] its propaganda through the media. It emphasizes the importance of enhancing the security of critical infrastructure, the individual, society and the state as a whole against terrorist threats."
The document also implicitly criticized the United States and its allies and their strategies in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, according to Patrushev, who said that "the emergence and strengthening of the influence of the terrorist organization calling itself IS was the result of double standards which several states have adopted in the fight against terrorism."