Turkish Prime Minister Davutoglu says that "secret actors" were behind yesterday's attack in Istanbul and that Turkey is trying to find out who hired the IS group as a "subcontractor."
Turkey has said that the IS group was behind yesterday's attack -- although IS has yet to claim responsibility.
Turkey's Prime Minister Davutoglu has said that four people have been arrested in connection with yesterday's suicide bombing in Istanbul that killed ten people.
Syrian rebel groups including the powerful Islam Army have said that they will not take part in peace talks scheduled for January 25 unless humanitarian articles in the latest U.N resolution are implemented, Reuters reports.
The UN Security Council unanimously approved a resolution on December 22 that demanded all combatants especially the Syrian government to allow the urgent delivery of food and medical aid to more than 13.5 million people.
AP and Syria Direct both have more on the recapture by Syrian government forces of the rebel stronghold of Salma in Latakia province.
A major factor in the development was Russian air strikes.
AP reports:
Backed by relentless Russian airstrikes, Syrian troops and allied militiamen on Wednesday pushed deeper into a major rebel stronghold in the northwestern province of Latakia, a day after seizing a key rebel-held town in the strategic region overlooking the coast, the government and opposition activists said.
Syria Direct spoke to rebel commanders who said that Salma fell to loyalist forces because of a lack of rebel fighters, intense Russian air strikes and disputes among rebels over the priority of different fronts.
“We requested many times that the other brigades send reinforcements to the Latakia coast front,” said Ali al-Halfawi, Ahrar a-Sham spokesman for the Latakia coast region, but northern rebels “are giving priority to the Aleppo front because of the importance of the Bab al-Hawa border crossing.”
Why is the capture of Salma significant?
"Whoever controls Salma gains control all those surrounding areas which it overlooks," said Zakariya Ahmad, an opposition activist in the nearby Idlib province, told AP.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has called for an immediate end to all sieges in Syria "as a matter of urgency and because of overwhelming humanitarian needs."
The most senior ICRC official in Syria, Marianne Gasser, says action needs to be taken now to help more than 400,000 Syrians currently living in besieged areas across the country.
"The scenes we witnessed in Madaya were truly heartbreaking. People are desperate. Food is in extremely short supply. It is the elderly, women and children who are suffering the most, especially from severe malnourishment. The conditions are some of the worst that I have witnessed in my five years in the country. This cannot go on," said Ms Gasser.
Calls for French Jews to leave their skullcaps at home in the wake of a militant attack on a kippa-wearing teacher has sparked an emotional debate that pitted security concerns against a desire to uphold Jewish identity, AFP reports.
Jewish parents in Marseille, where the attack happened on January 11, have urged their sons to wear a baseball cap instead.
Reuters has more on comments made by Turkey's Interior Minister Efkan Ala this morning regarding the suicide bomber who killed ten German tourists in an attack in Istanbul on January 12.
The bomber was registered with Turkey's immigration authorities but not on any list of known suspects, Ala said at a joint press conference earlier today with his German counterpart, Thomas de Maiziere.
"Your assessment that his fingerprints were taken and there is a record of him is correct. But he was not on the wanted individuals list. And neither is he on the target individuals list sent to us by other countries," Ala said.
A majority of Arab Muslim youths see the actions of militant groups such as the IS group and Al-Qaeda as a perversion of Islam's teachings, according to a new poll by the Zogby Research Services.
The poll asked 5,374 Muslim men and women aged 15-34 from the Middle East and North Africa for their views, according to AFP.
More than 90 percent of respondents in Morocco and the UAE called both extremist groups a "complete perversion of Islam," as did 83 percent of respondents in Egypt and more than 60 percent in Bahrain and Jordan.
More than 55 percent of respondents in the Palestinian territories and Saudi Arabia also said the radical groups were distorting Islam's teachings.
Attackers have thrown grenades and opened fire at a Pakistani television station in Islamabad, dropping pamphlets linked to the IS group's self-declared "Khorasan province" in Afghanistan, the station said.
As many as 70 Dutch children may be growing up among Islamic State jihadists, the Netherlands' AIVD intelligence services fear.
AIVD have released a report, "Life among IS, unravelling the myth," that seeks to explain to families, police and aid workers the truth about life in IS-controlled Iraq and Syria.
Among the grisly realities explained in the report is the fact that children are routinely taken to watch execution-style killings of those sentenced to death by IS militants.