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.

Egypt’s Al-Azhar, the Sunni Muslim world’s main religious institution, asserted on Monday in a fatwa, or religious decree, that it is compulsory for women in Islam to wear the veil, while those who deny this are “extremist” and “abnormal”. Through a statement released by The International Electronic Center for Fatwas of Al-Azhar, the institution said the veil, or hijab, is an obligatory duty imposed by the teachings of Islam, and any debate on the topic is unacceptable.

A bomb blast killed and injured people on a bus in Syria s Homs city on Tuesday, Syrian state television said. State-run Ikhbariya TV said there was "a terrorist explosion with a bomb inside a passenger bus in the Akrama neighbourhood". No other information was immediately available.

A wave of Syrian air strikes on Sunday killed at least 25 civilians and wounded dozens across the besieged rebel enclave of Eastern Ghouta near Damascus, a monitor said. The deadliest raids hit the town of Hammuriyeh, killing 17 civilians including six children, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The Administrative Control Authority (ACA) referred a preacher affiliated with Al-Azhar s Islamic Research Complex to court on Monday, on charges of inciting sectarianism. The authority said it followed videos circulating online of the preacher in Sixth October City giving a religious lesson in a mosque, where he challenged and disagreed with the view that a Muslim should be killed in case he killed a Christian. He cited the recent incident when a man stabbed and killed a Coptic cleric in Al-Marg, for which the perpetrator was sentenced to death for murder.

The Egyptian military has destroyed three hideouts and seized a weapons depot used by militants in the central part of the border Sinai Peninsula, a spokesman said Thursday. Tamer El-Refaie said in a statement that the military s third field forces seized a weapons cache housing "anti-tank projectiles, large amounts of highly explosive TNT material used by the militants to manufacture improvised explosive devices (IEDs), explosive belts and mortar shells."

A prominent US think tank has projected that Muslims share of the population in Europe will rise. Excluding migration, the researchers expect Muslims to make up 7.4 percent of Europe s population by mid-century. The share of Muslims living in Europe may double to more than 10 percent of the population by mid-century, according to new research on the continent s growing Muslim population.

A tribal militia killed at least 43 people in South Sudan s central Jonglei state, local officials said on Wednesday, part of a cycle of tit-for-tat revenge killings that local authorities have so far been powerless to stop. Raiders from the Murle ethnic group killed 20 men, 22 women and one child, and injured 19 people in the small village of Duk Payel on Tuesday, Jonglei Information Minister Jocab Akech Deng said.

Sheikh Mohamed Abdel Fattah, the imam of Rawda mosque in North Sinai, said that there were terrorist threats to the mosque, among others, for almost a year, in a Monday interview with dmc television channel. It has also been reported in the media that another smaller mosque in the district had been closed due to threats. The imam was injured in the attack, considered the deadliest in Egypt, as the official death toll stands at 305, including 27 children.

The head of Egypt s Coptic Orthodox Church Pope Tawadros II is recovering after successfully undergoing spinal microsurgery in Germany this week, church spokesman Bolis Halim said on Tuesday. "The pope is set to spend two weeks in recovery before returning to the homeland," the spokesman said. Pope Tawadros II left Cairo for Germany on 11 October to undergo surgery at a private hospital.

A convoy carrying food and medical aid entered Syria s rebel-held Eastern Ghouta on Tuesday, the United Nations said, in a rare humanitarian delivery that comes after days of heavy bombardment. A monitor said government air strikes continued Tuesday, hitting the town of Hammuriyeh shortly before the aid convoy entered the region, which has been under siege since 2013.

Pope Francis arrived in mainly Buddhist Myanmar Monday on a highly sensitive visit to a country facing sharp global criticism for the alleged ethnic cleansing of its Rohingya Muslim minority. Catholics in colourful ethnic traditional dress waved flags and danced at Yangon s airport in a joyful welcome for the pope, making the first visit to the country by a pontiff.

Since the deadly attack on a mosque in Egypt’s North Sinai that killed 305 worshipping Muslims, questions have been raised as to why the perpetrators would carry out such an act on civilians performing their weekly Friday prayers. Considering that the number of inhabitants in the Bir al-Abd village where the al-Rowda mosque is located is only around 2000, the attack wiped out a considerable part of the community.

The Pope has led a minute of silence in St. Peter s Square for the victims of the deadly attack on a mosque in Egypt. Francis said following the traditional Angelus greeting on Sunday that the victims "were praying in that moment. We also pray in silence for them."

Nigeria’s military has repelled an attempt by suspected Boko Haram militants to seize the northeastern town of Magumeri, a spokesman said on Sunday, a day after the attack. The assault was the latest in a series of attacks in northeast Nigeria, where the conflict with the Islamist insurgency has dragged into a ninth year with little sign of an end.

Russia s planned peace talks among Syrian groups will only succeed if the opposition ends its fight against the government, a senior adviser to President Bashar al-Assad said on Thursday. "The success of the congress depends on the various opposition groups realising that the time has come to stop the violence, lay down their weapons and engage in a national dialogue," said Bouthaina Shaaban in comments to a Russian news agency carried by Syrian state media.

Syria s main opposition stuck by its demand on Thursday that President Bashar al-Assad play no role in an interim period under any U.N.-sponsored peace deal, despite speculation it could soften its stance because of Assad s battlefield strength. "The participants stressed that this (the transition) cannot happen without the departure of Bashar al Assad and his clique at the start of the interim period," opposition groups said in a communique at the end of a meeting in Saudi Arabia.

The Egyptian Second Field Army – who are assigned with the task of securing North Sinai and Ismailia from an extremist insurgency – killed four militants on Tuesday during operations against the Islamic State group. A statement released by the military’s official spokesperson said the operation resulted in the destruction of a large amount of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) which were in possession of the militants.

Leading Palestinian factions are meeting in Cairo on Tuesday to follow up on the implementation of a Palestinian reconciliation agreement brokered by Egypt on 12 October, mainly between Palestine s two major groups Fatah and Hamas. Senior Fatah official Azzam Al-Ahmed said in Cairo that the current round of meetings aims to discuss the mechanisms of implementing the deal and pushing forward the Palestinian reconciliation process, despite the “slow pace” in its implementation.