IS seizes Syrian town from government forces

The jihadists’ advance came even as Russian warplanes and Syrian forces supported by them stepped up assaults against insurgents in west and northwest Syria, and the US separately sought to increase pressure on Islamic State.
The fighting tempered any expectation of progress towards a political solution to the four-year civil war, with warring sides and their foreign backers refusing to back down in a conflict where all the world’s major military powers except China are directly involved.