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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).

14:38 12.1.2016

Italy has said that it is treating 15 Libyan police officers injured in a January 7 truck bombing by the IS group.

The attack on a police training centre in Zliten killed 50 people and injured over a hundred. Italy has offered medical help to treat 15 of the most seriously injured.

14:31 12.1.2016

Shi'ite militiamen in eastern Iraq have carried out reprisal attacks against Sunnis after a double bombing by the IS group, security sources say.

An IS bomb attack in a cafe in Muqdadiya on January 11 killed at least 20 people. Afterward, Shi'ite militiamen went on a "rampage," killing several local Sunnis and destroyed Sunni-owned shops and restaurants, the BBC reports.

13:55 12.1.2016

13:54 12.1.2016

Elizabeth Hoff, the World Health Representative in Damascus who went to the besieged town of Madaya yesterday with an aid convoy, told Reuters by telephone today that she is "really alarmed" about the situation there.

Hoff said:

"People gathered in the market place. You could see many were malnourished, starving. They were skinny, tired, severely distressed. There was no smile on anybody's face. It is not what you see when you arrive with a convoy. The children I talked to said they had no strength to play."

13:27 12.1.2016

This morning's bomb blast in Istanbul was carried out by a 28-year-old Syrian suicide bomber, Turkey's deputy prime minister has said.

13:26 12.1.2016

In an attempt to curb the numbers of British women traveling to Syria to join the IS group, police in the UK have released a video of female Syrian refugees asking why any woman would choose to take her family to a war zone.

Some 56 women and girls are thought to have traveled to Syria from the UK in 2015 and police have expressed concern over the phenomenon.

The video was released in association with the UK NGO Families Against Stress and Trauma.

One of the refugees appearing in the video, Fatten, says that her family "were living under very bad circumstances and it was getting worse every day."

13:02 12.1.2016

Turkey's Daily Sabah has more details on Turkish President Erdogan's comments regarding this morning's blast in Istanbul that killed 10 people.

Erdogan told ambassadors at the Presidential Palace in Ankara that the blast was caused by a Syrian suicide bomber.

"This incident once again has shown us that we have to stay united against terrorism," Erdogan said

12:57 12.1.2016

The World Food Program (WFP) has tweeted these statistics about the aid that reached the besieged Syrian town of Madaya yesterday.

12:56 12.1.2016

Humanitarian groups are negotiating with all sides for the evacuation of 400 people, many starving, from the besieged Syrian town of Madaya, the Red Cross has said.

The United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent are now working to evacuate around 400 people in need of urgent care, said ICRC spokesman Pawel Krzysiek.

"It's a very complicated process that needs permission to realize this humanitarian operation. We are in negotiations with all parties," Krzysiek told AFP.

12:54 12.1.2016

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