At least eight people have lost their lives and nearly two dozen others sustained injuries in Cameroon's Far North region in a bombing attack by the Nigeria-based Takfiri Boko Haram terrorist group. "There were two bombers. Only the first bomb exploded," a local official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Friday. The development came more than a week after Cameroonian forces killed about 100 Boko Haram militants and freed some 900 captives held by the extremists.

"A special clean-up operation from November 26 to 28" against Boko Haram militants in the border area with Nigeria "neutralized more than 100" of them, Cameroon Defense Minister Joseph Beti Assomo said in a statement broadcast on national radio on December 2.

More than 100 people have reportedly lost their lives in the Far North of Cameroon in about 20 bomb blasts blamed on Nigeria-based Takfiris since July. Cameroon has joined a regional military alliance alongside Niger, Chad and Nigeria in the battle against Boko Haram.

The Boko Haram militancy began in 2009, when the terrorist group started an armed rebellion against the Nigerian government. At least 17,000 people have been killed and more than 2.5 million made homeless ever since. The terrorists recently pledged allegiance to the Takfiri Daesh militant group, which is primarily operating inside Syria and Iraq.

Pakistan test-fired a Shaheen-III intermediate-range nuclear-capable ballistic missile on Friday, the country's military reported. The missile had been first officially revealed earlier this year.

The missile was fired at the Arabian Sea and traveled 2,750km, its reported maximum range, said the Pakistani Army's press service ISPR.

"The successful flight test with its impact point in the Arabian Sea, validating all the desired parameters, was witnessed by senior officers from Strategic Plans Division, Strategic Forces, scientists and engineers of Strategic Organizations," the ISPR said in a statement.

The military operation in Syria is not dictated by geopolitical interests, but is designed to protect the country, said Russian President Vladimir Putin, adding that terrorists in Syria are a direct threat to Russia. The Russian military's actions in Syria are being coordinated with Russian special services such as the FSB, who are disclosing terrorist cells, including Islamic State, Putin said.

All forces threatening Russian servicemen in Syria should be destroyed, according to the Russian president. "Any targets threatening our [military] group or land infrastructure must be immediately destroyed," Putin said, speaking at a Defense Ministry event. Putin said over 5,000 members of the Free Syrian Army are operating on the terrorists' side.

"In general, the actions of the Russian groups deserve high praise. This is a result of work by the Ministry of Defense, General Staff officers, Russian Air Force pilots and the Russian Navy," he added.

Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu added that Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) controls about 70 percent of Syria's territory, adding that in Syria and Iraq there are about 60,000 militants. "The Islamic State area of influence is expanding," he said, "There is a threat that their actions will be transferred to Central Asia and the Caucasus."

To the date, the Russian military has carried out about 4,000 sorties, striking around 8,000 terrorist facilities in Syria, he added. Drones have proved a necessary part of the military operation against the terrorists, according to Shoigu. He said that Moscow has an about 1,720 drones at its disposal.

Last week, 14 innocent people lost their lives in San Bernardino, California. While shocking, Daniel McAdams points out that occurrences which are rare in the United States are far too common in the Middle East - and often the result of American bombs.

The shooting that claimed the lives of 14 people in California last week is undoubtedly tragic, and the worst mass shooting in America since Dylan Roof killed nine in a South Carolina church. But it's important to remember that similarly horrible events occur on an even more frequent basis in other parts of the globe.

"...Such attacks are commonplace in the countries the US seeks to 'liberate,' Daniel McAdams writes for the Ron Paul Institute. "Just yesterday, in the Syrian village of al-Khan, US bombers wiped out at least 36 civilians as they hit the center of the village."

The flight data recorder of the Su-24 bomber shot down by Turkey will prove the Russian jet was in Syrian airspace, not Turkish, when the attack took place, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday.

Putin was presented with the airplane's black box, which was recovered by Syrian and Russian special-forces, by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on Tuesday.

According to a report in the Moscow Times:

Russian President Vladimir Putin invited British experts to examine the black box from the Su-24 bomber downed by Turkey last month, the Kremlin's official website reported Wednesday.

The Russian President made the offer during a phone conversation with British Prime Minister David Cameron when he called to offer Putin his condolences after the incident, which resulted in the death of the plane's pilot.

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu showed the black box to Putin at a meeting on Tuesday. The president requested that it remain closed until foreign experts arrive to participate in an investigation into the downing.

The Turkish government warned all its citizens traveling in Iraq - excluding Kurdish provinces - to leave at once, as Ankara refuses to end aggression and withdraw hundreds of troops deployed near Mosul in Northwestern Iraq.

On Wednesday, Turkey's foreign ministry issued a statement calling for any citizens in Iraq to leave immediately.

"We strongly advise those whose stay is not essential to leave those provinces as soon as possible," the statements reads. "The scope of our travel warning to Iraq has expanded to include all provinces except for Dohuk, Arbil and Sulaymaniyah."
All of the exempted provinces are in the northern region of Iraqi Kurdistan.

Syrian Air Force operations have destroyed 1,375 militant targets across the country within a period of two weeks starting in late November. Army Spokesman Brigadier General Ali Mayhoub told reporters on Thursday that the victories had been achieved during more than 360 operational sorties between November 27 and December 10, the official SANA news agency reported.

"The sorties have been carried out on the gatherings of terrorists in the countryside of Damascus, Homs, Hama, Aleppo, Idlib, Dayr al-Zawr, Dara'a and Latakia where 4 command centers for terrorists in Aleppo countryside, near Tadmur and a command center in Latamneh in Hama countryside and 3 convoys of vehicles in Homs and Idlib countryside were completely destroyed," the spokesman said. "The Army established control on al-Hamra, Zeitan and other towns in Aleppo's southwestern countryside, after killing 50 terrorists from Jabhat al-Nusra," Mayhoub noted.

The army spokesman stated that the operations had forced terrorists to flee towards the country's border with Turkey, taking along family members of a number of terrorist leaders.

Units of the army destroyed three vehicles and two command centers in Kfar Zeita and al-Latamneh, killing more than 150 terrorists and destroying 9 vehicles equipped with heavy machine guns in Hama north-eastern countryside, he said, adding, "Units of the army killed a number of terrorists in an ambush in Talbeisah, destroying 3 vehicles in the area. The army expanded its control on areas Harasta and seized a net of tunnels and trenches stretching between Harasta and Douma in addition to uncovering a 350 m tunnel in Joubar in Damascus countryside," Mayhoub said.

The finance chief of the Daesh (ISIL) terrorist group and two other senior leaders recently killed in US-led coalition airstrikes, the Pentagon says.

Army Colonel Steve Warren, a US military spokesman, told reporters on Thursday that Abu Saleh, a 42-year-old Iraqi, was killed in late November. "He was one of the most senior and experienced members of ISIL's financial network and he was a legacy al-Qaeda member," Warren said. "Killing him and his predecessors exhausts the knowledge and talent needed to coordinate funding within the organization," he added. According to reports, Abu Salah's real name is Muafaq Mustafa Mohammed al- Karmoush.

The Pentagon spokesmen said two other ISIL figures -- Abu Mariam and Abu Waqman al-Tunis -- were also killed in coalition airstrikes in November.

Brett McGurk, America's special envoy to the international coalition against Daesh, said on Twitter that Abu Saleh was killed along with two associates "as part of coalition campaign to destroy ISIL's financial infrastructure." McGurk called Abu Saleh the group's "finance minister."

Daesh terrorists, who were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, now control large parts of Iraq and Syria.

Foreign Policy Diary - The Russia-Turkey standoff: Bosphorus blockade

The US military must reevaluate its combatant command structure to determine whether certain commands are needed amid the current threats and budget constraints, Senator John McCain said in a US Senate hearing on military effectiveness on Thursday.

McCain noted that US lawmakers repeatedly hear how "dramatic increases in civilian and military staffs have persisted even as resources available for warfighting functions are increasingly strained."

"We must ask whether the current combatant command structure best enables us to succeed in the strategic environment of the 21st century," McCain stated. "Should we consider alternative structures that are organized less around geography than trans-regional and functional missions."