Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that it is not possible to say that Russian operations in Syria will be over quickly, RIA Novosti reports.
Shoigu made his comments this morning in a closed-door session at Russia's lower house of parliament, according to Vladimir Gutenev, deputy head of the lower house's Industry Committee.
The Defense Minister reportedly said that this was because "we are seeing an influx of new recruits into the ranks of the terrorists and an absence of any war on terror on other fronts," Gutenev said.
Shoigu also said that the timescale for the Russian operation depended on how much the West, "who have been personally confronted with the problem of terrorism, will honestly cooperate," according to Gutenev.
Kurdish and Turkish media are reporting that IS has shelled the Bashiqa military base in northern Iraq where Turkish soldiers are stationed. One Turkish soldier has reportedly been wounded.
The IS group has "revolutionized" terrorism by seeking to inspire small-scale individual attacks around the world through social media, encrypted communications and slickly produced propaganda, FBI Director James Comey has said, Reuters reports.
Turkey's Daily Sabah has this update on the breaking reports that IS has shelled Turkish forces in the Bashiqa camp in northern Iraq.
Daily Sabah puts the casualty figures at two dead and six injured. It is not clear if all the casualties are Turkish.
Turkey's Hurriyet News says the source for the casualty figures of two dead and six wounded in an apparent IS shelling of the Bashiqa camp in northern Iraq is a Kurdish news website.
Some of the reports are saying that the casualties are Iraqis.
Turkey has not yet made a statement on the reports.
Turkish state TV is now saying that the Bashiqa base in northern Iraq has been attacked by IS militants and that four Turkish soldiers have been wounded.
Nick de Larrinaga of Janes Defense Weekly tweets that Russian Su-34 frontline bombers in Syria are flying with a new weapon: the KAB-500-OD TV-guided bomb.
According to the Tactical Missiles Corporation website, the KAB-500-OD is a corrected air bomb "fitted with TV/terrain-matching homing heads and various types of warheads. TV homers with target data processing correlation algorithm can "remember" target location and correct bomb's flight trajectory until the impact on the target, thus realizing the "fire and forget" principle. Such homing heads can help defeat low-contrast and masked targets provided that terrain reference points and target coordinates related to them are available."
The Kremlin has denied Iranian media reports that Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani visited Moscow recently for a meeting with Russian President Putin.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov simply answered "no" to a question from a TASS reporter about whether such a meeting had taken place.
The U.S. Department of Defense has tweeted these photographs of Defense Secretary Carter's meeting today with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.
Mahir Zeynalov of Turkey's Today's Zaman says at at least four Turkish soldiers have been wounded in an attack by the IS group on the Bashiqa base in northern Iraq.