ISIS terror group beheads two men on charges of spying

The atrocities happening in that region. And there are children, looking on like it's a normal thing to be beheaded. I don't want to imagine what this children will become in future, when they are already exposed to this inhumane acts.

Russia begins Syria air strikes in its biggest Mideast intervention in decades

Russia launched air strikes in Syria on Wednesday in its biggest Middle East intervention in decades, plunging the four-year-old civil war into a volatile new phase as President Vladimir Putin moved forcefully to stake out influence in the unstable region.

Moscow's assertion that it had hit Islamic State militants was immediately disputed by the United States and rebels on the ground. The attacks also raised the dangerous specter of Washington and Moscow running air strikes concurrently and in the same region, but without coordination.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after talks at the United Nations that they agreed their countries should meet very soon on the Syrian situation.

"We agreed on the imperative of as soon as possible, perhaps even as soon as tomorrow, but as soon as possible, having a military-to-military deconfliction discussion," Kerry said.

To "deconflict", in military parlance, is to ensure that, in this case, Russian aircraft do not accidentally clash in any way with Western warplanes.

A U.S. defense official confirmed that talks between the U.S. and Russian militaries could take place within the next day, possibly via secure video-conference or in person. The Pentagon aimed to involve both civilian and uniformed defense officials in the talks.

The U.S. State Department said a Russian diplomat in Baghdad notified the United States of the intended air strikes an hour in advance and warned that American aircraft that have been pressing a daily bombing campaign against Islamic State positions should avoid Syrian airspace.

Kerry said the Russian warning was ignored and U.S. air strikes continued on Wednesday.

Putin said he was striking against Islamic State and helping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, long Russia's closest ally in the region, in this aim.

But Washington is concerned that Moscow is more interested in propping up Assad, who the United States has long held should leave office, than in beating Islamic State. Assad's opponents in the brutal civil war include rebel groups that oppose both him and Islamic State and that are supported by the United States and other Western countries.

The Russian defense ministry said it carried out about 20 flights over Syria, hitting eight Islamic State targets and destroying an Islamic State command post and an operations center in a mountainous area, Russian agencies reported.

Syrians living in rebel-held areas of Homs province said the Russian air force unleashed a whole new level of devastation on their towns. Jets flying at higher altitudes than the Syrian air force emitted no noise to alert the people below to raids that were reported to have killed at least 33 civilians, including children.

Moscow's intervention means the conflict in Syria has been transformed in a few months from a proxy war, in which outside powers were arming and training mostly Syrians to fight each other, to an international conflict in which the world’s main military powers except China are directly involved in fighting.

Russia joined the United States and its Arab allies, Turkey, France, Iran and Israel in direct intervention, with Britain expected to join soon, if it gets parliamentary approval.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said of the strikes: "It does appear that they were in areas where there probably were not ISIL forces, and that is precisely one of the problems with this whole approach." ISIL is one of the acronyms for Islamic State, which has seized control of large areas of Syria and Iraq over the past year.

Western-backed Syrian opposition chief Khaled Khoja said the Russian strikes had killed 36 civilians and no rebel fighters, and accused Russia of seeking only to keep Assad in power.

DANGER IN THE SKIES

Moscow's move meant that warplanes from both the United States and Russia will be sharing the skies above Syria.

"I'm especially concerned because there has been no real effort by the Russian side to deconflict the Russian air strikes in Syria with the ongoing U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIL," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said during a visit to the United States.

Reflecting growing tension between the big powers, Kerry phoned his Russian counterpart Lavrov early on Wednesday to tell him the United States regarded the strikes as dangerous, a U.S. official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Russia was moving to "ramp up" support for Assad, adding: "They've made a significant military investment now in further propping him up."

Russia Sends Attack Helicopters to Syria, U.S. Official Says

Four Russian attack helicopters and four Russian transport helicopters have arrived in Syria in the past day, and Russia is also preparing to send attack jets, a senior American defense official told NBC News on Friday.

The disclosure came hours after the top U.S. and Russian defense officials spoke on the phone for the first time in more than a year to talk about the crisis in Syria, where Russia is building a military presence.

Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu told his U.S. counterpart, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, that the Russian buildup is "defensive in nature," according to a senior U.S. defense official.

Shoygu also said that the buildup was to honor Russian commitments to the Syrian government, the official said. The official refused to speculate that those commitments might include Russian military support and protection of the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Russian military support for the Assad government, which U.S. military officials say would probably include airstrikes against Syrian rebels attempting to overthrow the regime, would create a dilemma for the Obama administration. President Obama has long stressed that the Assad regime "must go."

The Pentagon described the conversation between Carter and Shoygu as constructive and said they agreed to keep talking. They talked about ways to de-escalate the conflict in Syria and fight ISIS, the Pentagon said.

Satellite imagery on Thursday showed the recent arrival of Russian tanks and other military equipment at an air base in the Latakia coastal region of Syria. The Pentagon said on Monday that it had seen a "continued steady flow" of equipment and people for more than a week.

The eight helicopters that have arrived in the past day are based just outside Latakia, the official said.

Russia supports the Assad government, while the United States supports the insurgents fighting him in a bloody four-year civil war.

The United States suspended talks between its military and the Russian military last year, after Russia seized the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine.

Russian troops join combat in Syria

Russian forces have begun participating in military operations in Syria in support of government troops, three Lebanese sources familiar with the political and military situation there said on Wednesday.

The sources, speaking to Reuters on condition they not be identified, gave the most forthright account yet from the region of what U.S. officials say appears to be a new military buildup by Moscow, one of President Bashar al-Assad's main allies, though one of the sources said the numbers of Russians involved so far were small.

Two U.S. officials said Russia has sent two tank landing ships and additional aircraft to Syria in the past day or so and has deployed a small number of naval infantry forces.

The U.S. officials, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said the intent of Russia's military moves in Syria remained unclear. One of the officials said initial indications suggested the focus was on preparing an airfield near the port city of Latakia, an Assad stronghold.

The moves come at a time when forces of Assad's government have faced major setbacks on the battlefield in a four-year-old multi-sided civil war that has killed 250,000 people and driven half of Syria's 23 million people from their homes.

Syrian troops pulled out of a major air base on Wednesday, and a monitoring group said this meant government soldiers were no longer present at all in Idlib province, most of which slipped from government control earlier this year.

Moscow confirmed it had "experts" on the ground.

But Russia has declined to comment on the exact scale and scope of its military presence in Syria. Damascus denied Russians were involved in combat, but a Syrian official said the presence of experts had increased in the past year.

Officials in the United States, which is fighting an air war against the Islamist militant group Islamic State in Syria and also opposes Assad's government, have said in recent days that they suspect Russia is reinforcing to aid Assad.

Washington has put pressure on countries nearby to deny their air space to Russian flights, a move Moscow denounced on Wednesday as "international boorishness".

Moscow's only naval base in the Mediterranean is at Tartous on the Syrian coast in territory held by Assad, and keeping it secure would be an important strategic objective for the Kremlin.

Two of the Lebanese sources said the Russians were establishing two bases in Syria, one near the coast and one further inland which would be an operations base.

"The Russians are no longer just advisors," one of them said. "The Russians have decided to join the war against terrorism."

Another of the Lebanese sources said that so far any Russian combat role was still small: "They have started in small numbers, but the bigger force did not yet take part ... There are numbers of Russians taking part in Syria but they did not yet join the fight against terrorism strongly."

The Syrian official said: "Russian experts are always present but in the last year they have been present to a greater degree."

Reflecting Western concern, Germany's foreign minister warned Russia against increased military intervention in Syria, saying the Iran nuclear deal and new U.N. initiatives offered a starting point for a political solution to the conflict.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said reports of growing Russian military activity in Syria were a cause for concern, while France said it made finding a political solution to the crisis more complicated.

Thus far in the war, Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah have the main sources of military support for Assad, but momentum turned against him earlier this year.

In the latest major battlefield setback, state television reported government troops had surrendered an air base in northwestern Syria to a rebel alliance after nearly two years under siege.

The loss of the base meant the last government troops had now withdrawn altogether from central Idlib province, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based group that monitors the conflict.

Coalitions of rebels, who range from hardline Sunni Islamists like al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate the Nusra Front to more secular nationalists, have made gains in the northwest and southwest of the country. They often fight against both the government and Islamic State fighters who control much of the east of Syria as well as northern Iraq.

Russia says the Syrian government must be incorporated into a shared global fight against Islamic State. The United States and Assad's regional foes see him as part of the problem.

Russia's Foreign Ministry said Moscow would consider additional military measures needed for fighting terrorism in Syria if it deemed them necessary.

Iraq Defence Minister Survives Assassination Attempt

Iraqi Defence Minister Khaled al-Obeidi’s convoy came under sniper fire but he was unharmed, a ministry spokesman said.

Joint operations spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Rasool said the attack took place in the western outskirts of the town of Beiji, 190km north of Baghdad.

“The minister is well and safe,” Rasool told Reuters news agency. He said a guard had been lightly injured in the attack.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack which took place on Monday.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abbadi has said the battle over Beiji and its refinery, Iraq’s largest, is critical to the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group.

If Iraqi security forces and Shia militia fighters regain full control of the area around Beiji, it could help them push north towards the ISIL-held city of Mosul and offset losses in the western province of Anbar.

Obeidi was in Beiji as part of a field visit to Salahuddin province. He earlier inspected troops at Camp Speicher, a former US military base, and later toured Tikrit, the home city of former President Saddam Hussein, a ministry statement said.

Beiji has been a battlefront for more than a year, since its seizure by ISIL in June 2014 as they swept through most of northern and western Iraq towards the capital.

ISIL holds about a third of Iraq and neighbouring Syria in its self-declared “caliphate.”

A US-led coalition is conducting air strikes to target ISIL across both Syria and Iraq.

Austria Plans To End Measures Allowing Migrants From Hungary And Move 'Towards Normality'

Austria said on Sunday it planned to end emergency measures that have allowed thousands of refugees stranded in Hungary into Austria and Germany since Saturday and move step by step "towards normality".

Austria had suspended its random border checks after photographs of a Syrian toddler lying dead on a Turkish beach showed Europeans the horror faced by those desperate enough to travel illegally into the heart of Europe, which is deeply divided over how to cope.

After 71 people suffocated in the back of a truck abandoned on an Austrian highway en route from Hungary, and as thousands headed from Budapest towards Austria on foot, Vienna had agreed with Germany to waive rules requiring refugees to register an asylum claim in the first EU country they reach.

Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann said that decision was being revised following "intensive talks" with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and a telephone call with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, bitterly opposed to the waiver.

"We have always said this is an emergency situation in which we must act quickly and humanely. We have helped more than 12,000 people in an acute situation," Faymann said.

"Now we have to move step by step away from emergency measures towards normality, in conformity with the law and dignity."

Hungary laid on over 100 buses to the border on Saturday night after Austria said it had agreed to the emergency measures, to the relief of thousands of migrants and refugees stranded in Budapest after traveling through the Balkans and Greece, many of them fleeing civil war in Syria.

Others set off from a station to make the 170-km (110-mile) journey on foot. A platforms filled up again on Sunday.

Germany has said it expects to receive 800,000 refugees and migrants this year, and urged other EU members to open their doors. It decided to free up additional three billion euros ($3.35 billion) for federal states and municipalities to help cope with the influx, a joint statement by the ruling coalition said.

'IT'S GETTING TIGHT'

At the station in Munich, state capital of Bavaria, a few dozen well-wishers turned up to cheer the new arrivals. Those who stopped to speak told of weeks of arduous travel by land and sea. Some seemed intimidated by the welcoming applause.

The president of the Upper Bavarian government, Christoph Hillenbrand, said he expected 13,000 migrants to reach the city on Sunday, up from a previous estimate of 11,000, following 6,800 arrivals on Saturday. Hillenbrand, adding that 11,000 could arrive on Monday, said Munich was running out of capacity.

Authorities there were using a disused car showroom and a railway logistics center as makeshift camps, and were adding a further 1,000 beds to 2,300 already set up at the city’s international trade fair ground. About 4,000 people were sent to other German states.

“It’s getting tight,” Hillenbrand told reporters at the train station.

Merkel's decision to allow the influx has caused a rift in her conservative bloc, with her Bavarian allies saying she had pushed ahead without consulting the federal state administrations dealing with the problem on the ground.

The political rift is greater across Europe, with Hungary's Orban accusing Berlin of encouraging the influx.