In a claim convenient to Russian war propaganda, a group of Tatars calling themselves the Crimean Jamaat reportedly pledged loyalty to Nusra Front, al-Qaeda's Syrian franchise.
With tensions high between Turkey and Russia, Moscow's intervention risks drawing the Kurds into the geopolitical game and escalating divisions within the Syrian resistance.
The Syrian regime says Russian air-strikes hit "ISIS dens"—but a look at the map indicates the strikes were nowhere near ISIS territory, and targetted rebel forces hostile to ISIS.
An Aleppo-based seed research center, forced by the war to flee to Beirut, has made an emergency request for seed stock from a "doomsday" vault on a remote Arctic island.
British Prime Minister David Cameron is now the first Western leader to take Vladimir Putin's bait in agreeing that Bashar Assad can be part of a Syrian "transition government."
China is reported to be sending warships to Syria to augment the Russian build-up there—as word emerges of a Uighur jihadist group allied with the Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front.
With the Rojava Kurds mounting an offensive on the last ISIS-held border town in northern Syria, Turkey has launched a new propaganda push to brand them as "terrorists."
The poorly named Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (sic) continues to propagate the bogus conspiracy theory of a CIA effort to overthrow the Bashar Assad dictatorship.
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.
Amid signs of an escalating Russian intervention in Syria, the opposition government-in-exile issued a statement pledging to "defeat any foreign occupation."
ISIS fighters seized the last oil-field still under the control of the Assad regime after several days of fighting. The Jazal field has a production capacity of 2,500 barrels per day.
The Turkish state is lining up international support for its "anti-terrorist" campaign against the PKK—as it carries out air-strikes and harsh repression on Kurdish villages.
