A suicide car bomber blew himself up at a police officers’ club in a residential district of Damascus on Tuesday, killing several people, Syria’s interior ministry said.

To doubters of its strategy for defeating the Islamic State, the Obama administration likes to tout its coalition of 66 nations and claim strength in numbers. But a year and a half into the war, some administration officials are acknowledging that this supposed source of strength has its own weaknesses.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was set to unveil Monday new plans for Canada's role in the international coalition against the Islamic State group, including his pledge to stop involvement in air strikes.

At least three people were killed and 14 wounded on Monday when a suicide bomber attacked a bus filled with Afghan army personnel in northern Afghanistan, officials said.

Thirty-four militant groups from around the world had reportedly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State extremist group as of mid-December — and that number will only grow in 2016, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a report Friday.

Giza prosecution services referred on Monday 26 Muslim Brotherhood supporters to a military trial over a series of attacks that damaged a Giza police station in January 2015.

Cairo Criminal Court resumed on Monday the trial of former President Mohamed Morsi and 10 others over espionage charges.

After Egypt President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi apologised for not finishing the reconstruction work of Christian properties damaged in the aftermath of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi’s ouster in 2013, the engineering unit of the Armed Forces immediately started cooperating with Coptic authorities to wrap up the pending renovations, religious Coptic figures said.

A professor at an evangelical university near Chicago who got in trouble after saying Muslims and Christians worship the same God will leave the school, according to a joint statement released by Wheaton College on Saturday night.

Unidentified aircraft carried out an air strike on the Libyan city of Derna on Sunday, killing at least three people, an eye-witness in the city and a local television station reported.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) said on Sunday it was ready to send ground troops to Syria as part of an international coalition to fight against Islamic State.

Islamic extremists have freed an Australian woman kidnapped last month in northern Burkina Faso, although her husband remains in captivity despite pleas from the family and efforts by officials to secure his release.

A Russian military adviser has been killed in Syria by shelling from the Islamic State group, the Russian defence ministry told Ria Novosti news agency Wednesday.

The US-led coalition of countries combating Islamic State in Iraq and Syria vowed Tuesday to "accelerate and intensify" their fight against the jihadist group, pledging more cash for reconstruction work and broader military action.

German police have arrested two Algerians they suspect of links to the Islamic State group and are hunting for two others in operations in Berlin and other regions, they said Thursday.

Egypt's interior ministry said that the two militants killed on Wednesday in the Cairo suburb of Maadi were planning attacks in response to the earlier killing of an Agnad Masr militant group leader by authorities.

The Misdemeanour Court of Al-Gamaliyya rejected the appeal of TV host Islam El-Beheiry Tuesday after the verdict he received in May 2015 been sentenced to one year in prison on charges of contempt of religion, state-owned Al-Ahram reported.

Egypt's Cassation Court accepted Wednesday the appeal of 149 defendants who had been given the death penalty in what has become known as the "Kerdasa massacre" case.

Giza Security Directorate investigations revealed that the director general of Giza's Endowments Department, who was recently arrested in connection with a fraud case, is wanted in three other cases concerning public funds.

Egyptian authorities have announced that two militants were killed in a firefight with police forces in the Cairo suburb of Maadi on Wednesday, official news agency MENA reported.

The international coalition combating the Islamic State group has not made a decision on whether to intervene militarily in Libya, Egyptian foreign ministry spokesperson Ahmed Abu Zeid said in press statements on Tuesday.