The Nusra Front fired hundreds of missiles into beseiged Alwaite villages in Syria, while ISIS claimed responsibility for suicide blasts that targeted Shi'ite areas of Baghdad.
Military atrocities against Kurds in Turkey's east are sparking protests across the country and the Kurdish diaspora—and a wave defections from village paramilitary forces.
The Kakai religious minority, targeted for extermination by ISIS, has formed a battalion to defend their villages on the frontline in northern Iraq—and are desperately in need of guns.
Russian fighter pilots are arriving in Syria, to begin sorties against ISIS and rebel forces—amid reports that Moscow's elite units are already fighting on the ground for the regime.
Aid workers in Aleppo governorate report treating patients for symptoms of a mustard-gas attack in a rebel-held town that had come under mortar fire by ISIS.
Kurdish-American pop singer Helly Luv is facing death threats from ISIS after travelling to the frontline in northern Iraq to produce a music video cheering on the Peshmerga.
Nearly a quarter of a million people have died in Syria's war since March 2011, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights—over a third civilians.
Tens of thousands took to the streets of Baghdad to protest economic conditions and corruption. The demonstrations are bringing together Sunnis, Shi'ites and leftists.
Young Yazidis—including women—are returning to Iraq's Mount Sinjar from which they were "cleansed" by ISIS last year, fighting to reclaim their homeland from the jihadists.
The US and Turkey have reached an agreement to keep Kurdish forces out of the northern Syria "buffer zone" as Ankara expands its air-strikes in both Syria and Iraq.
Washington has given Turkey a green light to crush the revolutionary Kurds—in Turkey, Syria and Iraq alike—as the price of Ankara's cooperation against ISIS.
With US support, Turkey is moving to seize its "buffer zone" in Syria—ostensibly against ISIS but actually against the Kurdish forces that have been the most effective against ISIS.
