AMMAN, Jordan (AP) — A Jordanian woman who came close to joining the Islamic State group described a sophisticated 14-month recruitment process by the extremists that she said landed her in a secret IS compound in Turkey with dozens of other women.

The 25-year-old was eventually persuaded by Jordanian lawmaker Mazen Dalaeen — who earlier this year failed to extract his own son from the grip of IS recruiters — to return to her family.

The case highlights the systematic grooming of potential IS recruits through daily social media exchanges and follow-up on the ground for travel arrangements — in her case an enveloped stuffed with cash for a plane ticket to Turkey, handed to her by a veiled woman in her home district of Karak in central Jordan.

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Rebel sources report that a missile hit a gathering of Islam Army leaders in the Eastern Ghouta region Friday, killing several of them, including Mohammed Zahran Alloush. Some reports also say that an allied rebel faction, Feilaq al-Rahman, had much of its leadership wiped out, and that the strike was carried out by Russia. (The Syrian government claims that its own airforce was behind the attack.)

This is big news and it has the potential to shift the balance of power in the Ghouta, a region of suburbs and agricultural towns into that rings the Syrian capital. It could also impact the Syrian peace process—such as it is—that is slated to begin this January.

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