Joana Cook from Kings College London's War Studies department says that British mother Tareena Shakil, whom a British court has convicted today of membership in IS, is lucky.
Shakil, who took her toddler son to IS-controlled Raqqa in Syria, managed to escape and return home -- something few women who join IS do, Cook notes.
IS has left Iraq's Ramadi in ruins: Sky News
IS rule and weeks of fighting have left the Iraqi city of Ramadi -- the capital of the western province of Anbar -- in ruins, with no running water or electricity and every bridge destroyed, Sky News reports.
IS militants rigged up dozens of buildings, turning what look like ordinary homes where families lived into houses of horror to kill and terrorize as they please.
In a matter of months, the militants built tunnels, some of them 1km long, to pass through the city undetected by drones surveying the skies above.
British woman who took son to Syria found guilty of joining IS
A British woman who took her toddler son to Syria has been found guilty of membership of the IS group.
Tareena Shakil, 26, is the first woman to return from IS-controlled territory to be convicted of such offenses, the BBC reports.
Shakil admitted traveling to Syria but denied joining IS, saying that she had just wanted to live under Sharia law and had sought to escape an "unhappy family life."
Syrian Turkomans cross to Turkey, fleeing advances of pro-Assad forces: Reuters
Hundreds of mostly Turkoman refugees fearing intensifying clashes between Syrian pro-government forces and the opposition in Latakia province have fled to Turkey, footage from Reuters TV showed and Turkmen officials have said.
According to Reuters, some 400 Turkomans -- ethnic Turks living in Syria -- have left the Syrian village of Yamadi and crossed into Turkey. The flow of refugees has increased since government forces captured the Latakia town of Rabia last week.
The spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition against IS in Syria and Iraq, Army Col. Steve Warren, has shared a video showing Iraqi Security Forces being trained using lessons learned from the battle to recapture the town of Ramadi from IS.
The BBC's Lina Sinjab has shared this image from Geneva, showing journalists waiting for the arrival of delegations to the Syria peace talks.
Message to the Syrian people by the UN Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura