Iraq's armed forces have begun an attack this morning to dislodge IS militants from the center of Ramadi, the capital of the western Anbar province, the spokesman for Iraq's counterterrorism units, Sabah al-Numani, told Reuters.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem will visit China this week, the Chinese Foreign Ministry has said, Reuters reports.
Moualem will be in China from December 23-26 and will meet his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told a daily news briefing this morning.
Sky News reports this morning that it has uncovered evidence that Russia may be covering up the true number of military deaths in Syria.
Sky claims that Moscow is carrying out military funerals on the quiet and withholding information about servicemen's deaths.
Following up on information passed to us by investigative bloggers led by Ruslan Leviev, we travelled to a small village near the Belarus border called Paltso to investigate the death of a 27-year-old special-forces soldier called Fyodor Zhuravlyov.
He was buried in the village cemetery in a quiet ceremony three weeks ago and his parents said the authorities had not told them what had happened to their son.
Yet we learned that it was "common-knowledge" on our visit to the village that Zhuravlyov had died in Syria.
George Brandis, Australia’s attorney-general, has warned that the IS group is seeking to create a “distant caliphate” in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation.
“[IS] has ambitions to elevate its presence and level of activity in Indonesia, either directly or through surrogates,” he told The Australian newspaper.
“You’ve heard the expression the ‘distant caliphate’? [IS] has a declared intention to establish caliphates beyond the Middle East, provincial caliphates in effect. It has identified Indonesia as a location of its ambitions.”
Iraqi forces have advanced into the center of Ramadi, the capital of Iraq's western province of Anbar, according to an Iraqi security official, AFP have just reported.
Russian federal Drug Control Service Director Viktor Ivanov has said that IS is receiving from $200- $500 million a year from sales of heroin from Afghanistan in Europe.
Most of the heroin is trafficked via Turkey, Ivanov claimed.
Nine Students Killed In IS Shelling In Deir al-Zor
IS militants have shelled a school district in a government-held area of Deir al-Zor city in eastern Syria this morning, killing at least nine students and wounding around 20 other people, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
SOHR said that the death toll was likely to rise.
Syrian state news agency SANA is reporting that nine female students were killed in the shelling of a school in the Harabesh neighborhood.
The BBC has more on the reports that Iraqi forces have now advanced into the center of Ramadi city.
The BBC is quoting the spokesman for Iraq's Counter-Terrorism Service, Sabah al-Numani, as saying that Iraqi troops and militiamen are advancing toward the main government complex in the center of the town.
Ramadi fell to IS in May.
Analyst Michael Horowitz has this to say about the Iraq army's push this morning to retake the center of Ramadi from IS militants: IS are likely to put up a tough fight and to have prepared counter-attacks including booby traps.
Reuters has another quote from Sabah al-Numani, spokesman for Iraq's Counter-Terrorism units, who says that there is fighting in the neighborhoods around the government complex in the center of Ramadi.
"Our forces are advancing toward the government complex in the center of Ramadi," Numani said. "The fighting is in the neighborhoods around the complex, with support from the air force."
Iraqi intelligence estimates the number of Islamic State fighters entrenched in the center of Ramadi, capital of Anbar province, at between 250 and 300.