Several Russian cruise missiles landed in Iran, claims CNN

It was unclear if it was Syrian or Russian.

Russian Federation says its intervention, in coordination with Iraq, Iran, and the Syrian government, is aimed at helping defeat the Islamic State terrorist organization, but USA officials and people on the ground say the strikes have also targeted Western-backed rebels.

Commanders in the USA special operations community had been pressing for that decision for weeks, defense officials told CNN, after seeing them achieve success on the battlefield.

Dozens of fighters have been killed on both sides as Islamic State advanced north of Aleppo on Friday, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

North Atlantic Treaty Organisation Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, meanwhile, this week said the military alliance was ready to defend Turkey against threats after violations of its airspace by Russian jets conducting the airstrikes against Syria.

The Observatory said IS seized the villages of Tal Qrah, Kfar Qares and at least four other small settlements in the northern Aleppo countryside.

Hundreds of Iranian troops have arrived in Syria to join a major ground offensive on behalf of President Bashar al-Assad’s government, Lebanese sources said last Thursday, a further step in the rapid internationalisation of a civil war in which every major country in the region has a stake.

The Anadolu Agency said Friday that Leyla, 27, died in the attack in the town of Hreitan, in northern Aleppo province, late Thursday. SOHR also reported that troops seized the neighboring Um Hartein Village.

A Guards statement said General Hossein Hamedani had played an “important role… reinforcing the front of Islamic resistance against the terrorists” but was killed “during an advisory mission”.

The United States and its allies have been waging a year-long air campaign against IS in Syria, while pushing to diplomatically edge Assad from power.

Assad is from the Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

The ministry, citing intercepted radio communications, said the raid killed two senior Islamic State field commanders and a few 200 militants there. His wife of one year is expecting their first child, Anadolu said.

But rebels and their backers say Hama, Idlib and Latakia have little or no ISIS presence and accuse Russian Federation of targeting moderate and Islamist Opposition fighters more than the jihadist group.

IsIL militants reached the outskirts of Syria’s second city yesterday as the U.S. warned Russian Federation its campaign to tackle the extremist group was backfiring.