Defence ministers from the US-led coalition striking the Islamic State (IS) group met Thursday in a bid to engineer a decisive new phase in what has become a difficult fight with no end in sight.

A delegation from the Palestinian Fatah movement arrived in Cairo Tuesday evening to hold meetings with Egyptian officials and provide updates on the latest reconciliation talks in Doha between the movement and its rival Hamas, MENA reported.

At least 500 people have been killed on all sides during fighting in Aleppo province since the start of a Syrian army and allied forces offensive began in early February, a war monitor said on Wednesday.

An Afghan police officer who was shot during an exchange of gunfire with members of NATO’s force in Afghanistan has died, the Ministry of Interior said on Wednesday.

Islamic State operatives are traveling to the Gaza Strip to receive medical treatment in hospitals controlled by the Iran-backed terrorist group Hamas, the Jerusalem Post reported on Monday, citing Israeli authorities. “We have received authenticated reports that ISIS members in Sinai entered the Gaza Strip through tunnels in order to receive treatment at Hamas hospitals,” IDF Maj.-Gen. Yoav Mordechai, coordinator of government activities in the territories, told the online Arabic news site Elaph. He added that Islamic State fighters enter Gaza though the same tunnel network that Hamas uses to smuggle arms and explosives.

Said Ramadan has lost count of how much he's borrowed just to stay afloat while other vendors at Giza's pyramids have already lost hope, as jihadist attacks bring Egypt's tourist industry to its knees. "I have no money to buy clothes for my children ... I hardly make any money as so few tourists are coming," Ramadan, 42, said at his dilapidated one-storey brick house near the world heritage site.

An Egyptian student from Al Azhar University has reached the final stage of the 58th International Quran Recital Competition hosted by Malaysia, Youm7 reported Tuesday.

Celebrations of the annual “Week of Prayer for Christian Unity” will begin Saturday and continue for the next seven days in churches across Egypt, El Watan news reported.

Iraqi security forces and the U.S.-led coalition say the government has regained full control of Ramadi after pushing Islamic State group fighters out of the city’s outskirts.

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.