A German man who returned home after fighting alongside IS in Syria for three months says the extremist group tried to recruit him to carry out attacks in Germany, Der Spiegel reports.
Harry S., a 27-year-old from Bremen, is now in investigative custody and has told police everything about his short time in Syria.
He converted to Islam and radicalized while in prison for aggravated theft. In April 2014, he made the journey to Syria.
Harry S. also told investigators that militants from Germany and Austria participated in executions of prisoners taken when IS took over the Syrian city of Palmyra this summer. The former IS fighter says that a notorious German militant named Mohamed Mahmoud told his fellow countrymen, ""Here are some prisoners. Which of you wants to waste them?"
NOW media has more on this morning's reports that Syrian government forces have captured Jabal al-Nuba in the Latakia mountains.
The advance by the Syrian army backed by Hezbollah and Russian air strikes is a serious blow to rebels, who are facing an "existential threat" in the northern Latakia mountains, NOW writes, quoting the Qatari-owned Alaraby Aljadeed.
NOW writes:
The capture of [Jabal al-Nuba] further to the west threatens the rebels’ hold of the Jabal Akrad [Kurdish mountain] region as well as their supply lines into the Latakia province.
[Jabal al-Nuba] not only overlooks the Aleppo-Latakia highway, it also constitutes a main defensive line for the rebels’ principal Latakia redoubt of Salma, one of the province’s majority Sunni-populated towns.
The FSA first captured Salma in mid-2012 and have since launched a number of operations from the area, which constitutes the insurgent-held front line to Latakia and the Assad family’s hometown of Qardaha.
While the capture of Salma -- which as Alaraby Aljadeed points out is "key to the regime control over the mountain region" -- would be a significant advance for the Syrian government in Latakia, there is an additional incentive for Russia to provide air support to help facilitate the advances.
A number of North Caucasian militant groups have been based in the northern Latakia area -- nicknamed the "Syrian Caucasus" -- around Salma since 2014.
The Provincial Council of Nineveh has blamed the Iraqi government for delaying an operation to liberate the city from Islamic State (IS), Kurdish news website BasNews reports.
Council member Ghazwan Dawoudi told BasNews that Baghdad has completely neglected Mosul and has no plan to liberate it from IS, but claimed that Kurdish Peshmerga militia forces had "shown readiness" to support any operation to recapture Mosul.
“Officials in Baghdad pledged support but failed to keep their promises,” Dawoudi said.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexei Meshkov has also criticized NATO's response to Turkey's downing of the Russian Su-24 jet near the Syrian border last month.
Meshkov reiterated Moscow's stance that NATO's response to the incident had been one of "allied solidarity."
"I would hope that the alliance is aware of the risks and negative consequences of such a short-sighted and entirely situational policy," Meshkov said.
Turkey will not pay compensation to Russia for the downing of the Russian Su-24 jet near the Syrian border last month, Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Tanju Bilgic said.
Bilgic was responding to comments made earlier this morning by Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Alexei Meshkov, who said that Ankara should compensate Russia for the plane incident.
Bilgic also responded to Meshkov's comments that Turkey should guarantee that such an incident would not happen again.
If Russia did not violate Turkey's air space in the future, then such an incident would not happen, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said.
Russia insists that the Su-24 was shot down over Syrian air space, Turkey says the plane had been in Turkish air space.
Saudi Arabia’s inclusion of Pakistan in a 34-nation military alliance against terrorism sparked much confusion on Tuesday after officials in Islamabad said they were unaware of any such development, Pakistan's Express Tribune reports today.
When contacted, a senior official of Pakistan’s Foreign Office said they were gathering details about the newly formed alliance. “We came to know about it (the alliance) through news reports. We have asked our ambassador in Saudi Arabia to get details on it,” he said, suggesting that Pakistan has been caught off guard by the Saudi announcement.
Separately, a senior government functionary told The Express Tribune that he could not confirm whether Pakistan had joined the Saudi alliance.
“We have been cooperating with Saudi Arabia on counter-terrorism efforts but I am not sure we are going to be part of any military alliance,” insisted the official, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has ruled out Russian ground troops participating in fighting in Syria, RIA reports.
RIA Novosti has more on Russia's Defense Minister Shoigu's announcement ruling out ground troops in Syria.
Admiral Vladimir Komoyedov, the head of the Russian parliament's defense committee, told the State Duma this morning that Shoigu had said "we are not inclined" to talk about ground operations in Syria.
Chechen Twitter user Magomed Edilsultanov, who writes for the North Caucasian news website Kavpolit, tweets this in response to Russian Defense Minister Shoigu's announcement that Russia won't be sending ground troops to Syria.
"Shoigu ruled out Russian soldiers participating in a ground operation in Syria. But what about 'volunteers'?"
It's a good question: Admiral Vladimir Komoyedov, the head of the Russian parliament's defense committee and the person who announced Shoigu's comments this morning, said in October that Russian volunteers who had honed combat skills in Ukraine will likely "appear in the ranks of the Syrian army as combat participants."
Reuters has more on the confusion surrounding Saudi Arabia's new Islamic coalition against terrorism.
Although Western nations have welcomed the announcement of the coalition, "comments from several of the countries that signed up to the initiative appeared to reveal a lack of preparation by Riyadh," Reuters notes.
Some countries, including Indonesia, said that Riyadh had approached them to ask them to join a center to "coordinate against extremism and terrorism" but Saudi Arabia had then announced a military alliance.