Egypt's Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadros II attempted on Monday to reassure Egyptians after the recent attacks on Copts in North Sinai, stressing that the Coptic families that have fled the governorate out of fear of terrorist violence will return to the city "when the time is right." At the start of this month, the Coptic Orthodox Church announced that 143 Christian families had fled North Sinai to Ismailiya after a spate of killings of Christians by Islamist militants in the governorate.

Islamic State's branch in the Sinai Peninsula posted a video on Tuesday depicting the beheading of two men the militant Islamist group said it had found guilty of practicing witchcraft and sorcery. The video, posted on a Telegram channel often used by IS, showed the group forming a religious police unit known as the Hasbah in northern Sinai, where it has waged an insurgency for years. The rugged, thinly populated peninsula borders Israel, Gaza and the Suez Canal.

Islamic State-affiliate Province of Sinai released a promotional video on Tuesday showing members of the organization carrying out what it alleges to be Hisba, or religious policing. The group claimed the footage is from locations in North Sinai, which it did not identify. Hisba is defined by religious scholars as the practice of commanding virtue and forbidding vice, professor of Islamic law professor at Al-Azhar University Ahmed Kareema told the state-owned Al-Ahram newspaper. He added that Hisba should be conducted by a select few who must be efficient, fair, knowledgeable and capable, describing it as a type of guardianship falling to those who have been entrusted with religious matters.

The media arm of Lebanon s militant Hezbollah group says hundreds of Syrian rebels and civilians have started leaving the Lebanon-Syria border area after a deal was reached for their departure. The Central Military Media says buses carrying members of the Levant People s Brigades rebel group started moving on Monday from the badlands of the Lebanese border town of Arsal in the direction of the Syrian village of Fleeta.

Police forces declared on Sunday the detention of 41 individuals in different security campaigns. Most of them are suspects, while 41 of them are fugitives involved in different misdemeanours, according to the Ministry of Interior. According to state-owned agency MENA, a police campaign led by the North Sinai Security Directorate managed to arrested 41 fugitives who are wanted and convicted in different cases, including forgery and several administrative violations. The arrested individuals will be interrogated and sent to the prosecution, while others will be sent to prison as they had previously been sentenced already.

The Archbishopric of Egypt’s upper governorate of Minya released a statement on Sunday calling on the government to reopen the closed Coptic Church in ‘Kedwan’ village in Minya. The statement made it clear Copts in Minya are angry that the authorities closed the church for nearly a month period, after extremists in the village expressed refusal to the presence of a church.

A renegade leader of Somalia’s Islamic extremist insurgents, al-Shabab, has surrendered to the government. Mukhtar Robow arrived Sunday in the government-controlled town of Hudur in southwestern Somalia, said Ahmed Mohamed, a senior government security official. He said Robow was airlifted from the Bakool jungle area where he and hundreds of his militia have been fighting al-Shabab since early last week.

Four policemen were killed in an ambush on a private car near the city of Beer Al-Abd in North Sinai, after the military announced the killing of five militants in central Sinai, according to tribal sources. The four policemen, an officer, a lower-ranking officer, and 2 conscripts, were part of the North Sinai Directorate. The car they were in reportedly belonged to the police officer.

Pope Francis on Wednesday denounced "shameful" attacks on Christians in Nigeria and the Central African Republic (CAR), calling for an end to "all hate and violence". "I have been profoundly saddened by the massacre last Sunday in Nigeria, inside a church, where innocent people were killed," the pontiff said at the end of his weekly public audience at the Vatican. "And sadly this morning we have news of violence in the Central African Republic against Christian communities.

Adel El-Shorbagy, the head of the Party Affairs Committee, which regulates political parties in Egypt, told reporters this week that the committee is currently investigating 10 Islamist parties. "The investigation encompasses participation in terrorist attacks, forming underground armed militias, inciting violence, and funding terrorism," said El-Shorbagy. El-Shorbagy s comments came after Egypt s Higher Administrative Court postponed on Sunday its ruling on the legal status of the Reconstruction and Development Party – which acts as the political arm of the Islamist group Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya – to 19 August.

French police shot and arrested a suspect in a dramatic motorway chase Wednesday after a car smashed into soldiers outside a barracks in a Paris suburb, injuring six. The suspected terror attack is the latest in a string of assaults that have hit France since January 2015, claiming more than 230 lives. The servicemen were hit by a BMW which drove down a quiet street in the upmarket western Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret at around 8:00 am (0600 GMT).

Al-Qaeda s leader has claimed in an online message that a German man believed to have provided logistical support to the Hamburg-based Sept. 11 hijackers has died. The announcement by Ayman al-Zawahri came in an Aug. 2 audio message in which he says a man he identifies as Zuhair al-Maghribi who worked for As-Sahab, the terror network s media arm, is a "martyr." He didn t provide details or say when and how al-Maghribi died.

Pakistani security forces killed four Taliban militants in the eastern city of Lahore hours after a truck bomb killed one person and wounded 22, authorities said on Tuesday. Attacks in Pakistan’s second-largest city have decreased over the past couple of years but Islamist militant groups are still active there, including a suicide bombing last month that killed 25 people.

Minya Criminal Court has handed down 12 death sentences and 157 life prison terms for crimes relating to the storming of a police station in 2013. The defendants were convicted on Monday of various acts of violence, including murder, as well as the storming of Matay police station and setting it on fire.

Coptic couples affected by personal status laws participated in a divorce ceremony on Saturday evening– the first of its kind for followers of the Christian sect. The participants celebrated their ‘second chance’, stressing the need to adopt a civil law that guarantees Copts the right to divorce and re-marry, and expressing condemnation of the Church’s negligence on the matter.

On 16 July, the Egyptian Armed Forces launched the fourth phase of Operation Martyr s Right, which aims to counter militant and terrorist activity in Sinai, 10 days after 26 Egyptian security personnel were killed in an attack in North Sinai s Rafah city. During the fourth stage of the operation, the army said that its forces killed 40 militants involved in the 7 July attack.

France has seen 271 Islamists militants return from war zones in Iraq and Syria and all of them are subject to investigation by public prosecutors, the country s interior minister said in a newspaper interview. Some 700 French nationals are estimated to have fought in Islamic State group ranks in Iraq and Syria, and like other European countries France has been wrestling with how to handle the flow of so-called returnees.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said on Thursday the country s intelligence agency had downgraded the threat level to aviation after an alleged "Islamic-inspired" plot to bring down a plane was uncovered and disrupted. Four men were arrested in raids in several suburbs in Sydney, Australia s largest city, at the weekend and held without charge under special terror-related powers. One man has since been released.

More than a hundred buses carrying thousands of al-Qaeda-linked fighters and Syrian refugees drove down a dirt road from Lebanon into Syria on Wednesday, in what was the last phase of an exchange deal between Syria s al-Qaeda branch and Lebanon s militant Hezbollah group. The departure of al-Qaeda fighters from the Lebanon-Syria border comes three years to the day its fighters stormed the Lebanese border town of Arsal and captured two dozen soldiers, killing some in captivity and releasing others. The group s presence in Lebanon has left scores of people dead.

Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on a Shia mosque in Afghanistan that killed and wounded dozens of people on Tuesday, the group s official agency AMAQ said on Wednesday. "About 50 Shia were killed and 80 wounded in an attack by Islamic State militants yesterday on a Husseiniya in the city of Herat in western Afghanistan," AMAQ said.

A car bomb explosion in the southern Somali town of Kismayo wounded at least 10 people on Tuesday, police and residents said. The blast occurred on a busy road in the port city once prized by warlords and the Islamist militant group al Shabaab for its money-spinning charcoal trade, said Mohamud, a police officer who gave his first name only. "We believe it was a car bomb parked here in this busy street. So far we know 10 civilians were injured," he told Reuters.