al-Nusra Front

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) called on Muslims on Oct. 13 to wage jihad on Russia and the United States, as Moscow announced it had intensified its air campaign against Islamic militants in Syria.

Syrian government troops backed by Russian air strikes advanced against rebels on Oct. 11, as a rights group accused Moscow of being behind a new type of cluster bomb in the conflict.

Four Russian cruise missiles aimed at targets in Syria crashed in Iran, a US official said Oct. 8, as regime troops backed by Lebanon's Hezbollah pressed a "vast offensive" against rebels in the war-torn country's west.

It was mid-July this year when senior American officials described a deal between Ankara and Washington over the former?s full and active participation in the international coalition?s fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), opening its most strategic bases to coalition countries as a ?game changer?

Syria predicted Sept. 20 that Russia's growing military role will prove a game changer in the fight against jihadists, as 75 rebels trained under a beleaguered US programme entered the fray.

A batch of 75 rebels newly trained by US and coalition forces in Turkey to fight jihadists have entered northern Syria, a monitoring group said on Sept.20.

Al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate and its allies seized the last regime-held military base in northwestern Idlib province on Sept.9, in the latest setback for President Bashar al-Assad's forces.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) jihadist group has executed more than 90 people, a third of them civilians, over the past month in areas of war-torn Syria under its control, a monitoring group said on Aug. 29. 

A new 48-hour truce between Syrian regime forces and rebels in three towns entered into force on Aug. 27 after negotiations, a mediator and a monitoring group said.

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters seized five villages from rebel forces in Syria's northern Aleppo province overnight and entered the outskirts of a key opposition bastion there, a monitor said on Aug. 27.
The jihadist group seized three villages near the town of Marea and entered its southern outskirts, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.