Turkey's military says it has carried out aerial raids on suspected Kurdish rebel targets in a new cross-border offensive in northern Iraq, AP reports.
A brief statement said that the raids had destroyed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) targets in four areas of northern Iraq.
Today's strikes are the first since tensions began between Turkey and Iraq at the weekend over Turkey's deployment of troops near the IS-controlled northern Iraqi city of Mosul for a training mission.
AFP has more on the reports that a suicide bomber has killed eight people this morning near a Shi'ite mosque in eastern Baghdad.
Security and medical officials say the blast in the Obeidi area has wounded at least 19 people.
AFP notes that while no group has yet claimed responsibility, in Iraq suicide bombings are a tactic used almost exclusively by the IS group.
Lavrov: Those Who Call For Assad To Step Down Are Strengthening IS
Those nations calling for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down are indirectly contributing to the strengthening of the IS group, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said according to pro-Kremlin news site RIA Novosti.
"If the problem of Assad remains an artificial obstacle to the creation of a universal anti-terror coalition, then those who are insisting on that, I have no other way to put this, they will indirectly strengthen the conditions for IS to grow," Lavrov told the Italian media today.
"We need to abandon double standards and preconditions. If one of the members of the American coalition [against IS] has a personal antipathy to President Assad, then these personal reasons must still be subordinate to the fight against terrorism, which already poses a real threat, is killing people, Russians and Europeans and Americans and citizens of regional countries."
"IS is not Islam," U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said today in comments criticizing remarks by Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump on Muslims.
Trump says the United States should stop Muslims entering the country.
Speaking from Paris, Kerry said that there are "courageous Muslims around the world" who are standing up to the IS group.
A suicide bomber has reportedly killed eight people near a Shi'ite mosque in Baghdad, Iraq, AFP have just reported.
Busloads of Syrians -- families and rebel fighters -- have left Al-Waer, the last rebel-held neighborhood of Homs today as part of a local truce agreement between the Syrian government and rebels.
The rebels and their families are being moved to rebel-held areas near the Turkish border.
Witnesses saw 15 buses leave the area, Reuters reports.
The Homs Media Center, a pro-opposition citizen journalist group, posted this video showing families and rebels boarding a bus in Al-Waer this morning.
The Russian Defense Ministry has shared a video showing the Rostov-on-Don submarine firing a Kalibr cruise missile at targets in Syria.
The Ministry claims that the missile hit an IS target in Raqqa.
The use of cruise missiles prompted a question about their cost this morning by a reporter to Russian Prime Minister Medvedev, who said the budget for the Syria operations was "a secret."
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has refused to name the sum spent by the Russian military for its operations in Syria.
"That's a secret," Medvedev said, according to Russian government daily Rossiskaya Gazeta.
Medvedev was answering a question from a reporter about the cost of the use of Russian cruise missiles in Syria.
Medvedev said that the cost of the operation was within the budget and the Defense Ministry has not asked the government for additional funds for Russia's operations in Syria.
Russian President Putin has invited British specialists to help decipher data from a flight recorder that Moscow believes is from the downed Su-24 jet.
Putin made the suggestion during a telephone call earlier today with UK Prime Minister David Cameron, TASS reports.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu gave the flight recorder -- which Russia said yesterday had been found in Syria -- to Putin.
Turkey downed the Su-24 on November 24 near the Syrian border. Ankara insists the jet had violated its airspace while Russia has maintained that it never left Syrian air space.
A Chinese official has denounced a call by the Dalai Lama for dialogue with the IS group, China's state-run Global Times newspaper has said.
"By saying, 'listen, understand and respect' them, it exposes, in his very bones, his sympathy or endorsement for IS," the paper quoted Zhu Weiqun, chairman of the ethnic and religious affairs committee of the top advisory body to China's parliament, as saying.