– UN to host next Syria talks end of January in Geneva, plans ‘light’ monitoring of ceasefire
– ISIS shelling of Syrian school area kills nine
– Turkey’s Davutoglu condemns Russian strikes on Idlib; black box from Russian jet unreadable
– Turkey police kill two ‘female terrorists’; Kurdish fighters kill two Turkish soldiers in bomb attack

UN to host next Syria talks end of January in Geneva, plans ‘light’ monitoring of ceasefire
The next round of talks aimed at easing the violence in war-torn Syria will be held at the United Nations’ European headquarters in Geneva early next year, a UN spokesman said Tuesday. Director of the UN office at Geneva Michael Moller said of UN Syria Envoy Staffan de Mistura, “The intention is that he starts some time toward the end of January.” Following Friday’s Security Council resolution, the United Nations is mulling “light touch” options for monitoring a possible ceasefire in Syria that would keep its risks to a minimum, relying largely on Syrians already on the ground. UN planning for truce monitoring will seek to avoid repeating the “disaster” of a mission sent to Syria in 2012. Diplomats explained, that operation failed because the warring parties showed no interest in halting clashes. Under the light-touch mechanism under consideration, the United Nations would rely on Syrian “proxies” on the ground to report violations. This could possibly involve a small group of non-uniformed UN officials in Syria to carry out investigations of ceasefire violations. [AFP, 12/22/2015]

ISIS shelling of Syrian school area kills nine
ISIS militants shelled a school district in eastern Syria Tuesday, killing at least nine students and wounding around 20 others, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) monitoring group said. Syrian state media said nine girls had been killed and said “shells fired by terrorists” had hit the government-held area in the provincial capital Deir Ezzor city, which is mostly held by ISIS fighters. SOHR said the number of dead was likely to rise and said dozens of people had been killed and wounded in months in heavy shelling of Deir Ezzor. [Reuters, AFP, Al Jazeera, 12/22/2015]

Turkey’s Davutoglu condemns Russian strikes on Idlib; black box from Russian jet unreadable
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu Tuesday condemned an attack on the rebel-held Syrian city of Idlib, believed to have been carried out by Russian jets, and said Syria will not be part of “Russian imperialist goals.” This weekend’s air strikes killed scores of people in the center of Idlib in northwest Syria on Sunday, rescue workers and residents said. Relations between Ankara and Moscow are already at their worst in recent memory after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane over Syria last month. On Monday, the Russian military said aviation experts so far have failed to retrieve information from a flight data recorder from the downed warplane. A Deputy Head of the Russian military’s flight safety service Lt. Gen. Sergei Bainetov said an inspection of the recorder has revealed that thirteen of sixteen microchips on its data board are nearly ruined and the remaining three are damaged. He said experts will attempt to retrieve information from them, but the effort will take a long time. [Reuters, 12/22/2015]

Turkey police kill two ‘female terrorists’; Kurdish fighters kill two Turkish soldiers in bomb attack
Turkish police killed two female “terrorists” in a predawn raid Tuesday on a cell of suspected militants in Istanbul, media reports said. The Dogan news agency said the clash, which also left four police lightly wounded, took place in the Gaziosmanpasa district in the north of the European side of the city. The report did not specify with which organization the two suspects were affiliated. Gaziosmanpasa is known as a stronghold for supporters of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the ultra-left Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C). The report said the pair were part of a cell linked to a mysterious bomb attack on December 1 near an Istanbul metro station that wounded up to half a dozen people, though no group ever claimed the attack that appeared to have targeted a passing police vehicle. In related news, two Turkish soldiers were killed in a roadside bomb attack on their vehicle by Kurdish fighters in southeastern Bitlis province on Monday according to security sources. The sources said the bomb had wounded six other soldiers in the military vehicle, driving on a forested road near an area of clashes with PKK fighters. [AFP, 12/22/2015]