Protected by the heaviest security ever seen on his trips, Pope Francis on Sunday preached reconciliation in the divided Central African Republic, a nation racked by bloodshed between Muslims and Christians.

Head of the Coptic Orthodox Church Pope Tawadros II made an “exceptional” trip on Thursday to Jerusalem through Tel Aviv to head the funeral prayer for Metropolitan Archbishop of Jerusalem and the Near East Bishop Abraham.

The head of Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Church headed Thursday to Jerusalem to attend the funeral of the holy city’s archbishop, a move that breaks with a longtime ban maintained by the church on visiting the city before the end of Israeli occupation.

Eighteen people were killed and 100 homes torched in an attack in the dead of night by Nigeria's Boko Haram fighters on a village near southeastern Bosso, local authorities told AFP on Thursday.

Germany plans to send Tornado reconnaissance jets to support the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS) group in Syria, the defence spokesman of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives said Thursday.

Pope Francis said on Thursday dialogue between religions in Africa was essential to teach young people that violence and hate in God's name was unjustified, speaking in Kenya which has been the victim of a spate of Islamist militant massacres.

Pope Francis flew out of Rome on Wednesday, bound for Kenya on the first leg of a landmark trip to Africa that is fraught with security risks.

The Islamic State group on Wednesday claimed the deadly bombing of a presidential guard bus in the Tunisian capital in a statement shared on jihadist social media accounts.

Deputy chairman of the Salafi Dawa Yasser Borhamy accused the Interior Ministry, Muslim Brotherhood and the media of undermining the Nour Party's popularity during parliamentary elections.

An Al-Azhar Faculty of Islamic Sciences will be established in the United Arab Emirates per an agreement signed Wednesday, Al-Azhar announced.

Experts are in disagreement over the extent of the effect of Turkey’s shooting down of a Russian military aircraft on both the French attempt to form a large coalition including Russia and the US to fight “Islamic State” (IS), and the conflict in Syria.

Four people -- a judge, a prosecutor, and two security personnel -- were killed on Tuesday and 14 were injured in North Sinai's restive city of Al-Arish during attacks on a hotel where judges supervising the ongoing parliamentary polls were residing.

Since last month, US warplanes have struck Islamic State's oil infrastructure in Syria in a stepped-up campaign of economic warfare that the United States estimates has cut the group's black-market earnings from oil by about a third.

A teaching assistant at Al-Azhar University was suspended and referred to investigation for “inciting protests,” according to a Tuesday statement by the university.

A bomb exploded outside the offices of a Greek business federation in central Athens on Tuesday, badly damaging the nearby Cypriot Embassy but causing no injuries, police officials said.

Islamic State’s Egyptian branch claimed responsibility for a bombing that killed four people in a hotel in North Sinai capital al-Arish on Tuesday where judges overseeing a parliamentary election were staying.

The chaos and violence gripping the Middle East are not likely to evaporate even if the forces arrayed against the Islamic State group manage to crush the brutal army and its drive to establish an Islamic caliphate in Iraq and Syria and beyond.

A key member of a Saudi-led Arab coalition has blamed Islamists for delays in its military operations to expel Shiite Huthi rebels from the key southwestern province of Taez.

Cyprus was expected to deport six French citizens to Switzerland after they were detained at the island's main airport and suspected of links to extremist groups, Cypriot authorities said Monday.

A Islamic State fighter identified as Belgian urged his "brothers" abroad to follow the example of the Paris attacks, which he praised for bringing havoc to France, an Islamic State video published on Monday showed.

Anti-Muslim hate crimes rose 300 percent in Britain in the week following the coordinated attacks in Paris, according to figures published on Monday.