The United States and its allies conducted 19 strikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria on Wednesday, the coalition leading the operations said in a statement Thursday.

Witnesses say a bomb has exploded outside the state secretariat offices in a bustling downtown area of Nigeria’s northeastern city of Maiduguri.

Pope Francis said Thursday he is prepared to set up a commission to study the possibility of women entering the Catholic clergy at the rank of deacon, one below a priest.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says Turkish forces have killed some 3,000 Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq, insisting that no other country has matched Turkey’s efforts against the extremist group.

Forces in western Libya are preparing to advance on the city of Sirte, seized by Islamic State last year, their spokesman said, pushing ahead with plans for a counter-attack after the Islamists made territorial gains in the last week.

The US-led coalition on Tuesday staged 14 strikes against Islamic State in its latest round of daily strikes on the militant group in Iraq and Syria, the coalition leading the operations said in a statement.

Two suspected Islamist militants were killed on Wednesday during a security operation near the Tunisian capital, the interior ministry said.

Turkish air strikes in the southeastern province of Hakkari and in northern Iraq killed 11 Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) fighters on Tuesday, the armed forces said in a statement on Wednesday.

A US-led coalition air strike has killed a senior Islamic State group leader in Iraq's Anbar province, along with three other IS group militants, the Pentagon said Monday.

The new mayor of London is criticizing Donald Trump's stance on Islam, describing it as "ignorant" and warning it could make both the UK and the US "less safe."

Italian police on Tuesday arrested two people as part of an investigation into a militant cell suspected of planning attacks in Rome and London, an investigative source said on Tuesday.

After more than a decade of dipping in and out of Iraqi politics, Muqtada al-Sadr, the young Shiite cleric who first made his name fighting U.S. forces in post-2003 Iraq, is leveraging his enduring popular appeal to again roil Iraq’s political order.

Egypt's Court of Cassation overturned a five-year jail sentence Tuesday and ordered a retrial for the nephew of ousted president Mohamed Morsi and eight others on charges of storming a university building in the Nile Delta's city of Zagazig.

Egypt’s Islamic Sunni Institute of Al-Azhar and the Coptic Orthodox Church, in cooperation with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), signed Monday a declaration statement per which NGOs and government institutions should consider the religious point of view when combating child abuse. Both the Islamic Sunni Institution and the Coptic Orthodox Church condemn all forms of child abuse.

Syrian government forces and their allies clashed with insurgents near Aleppo on Monday and warplanes launched more raids around a strategic town Islamist rebels seized last week, a monitoring group said.

A California student was embarrassed and distressed after a picture of her wearing an Islamic head scarf, or hijab, appeared in her high school yearbook with the false name “Isis Phillips,” a Muslim advocacy group said on Sunday.

The airport has reopened at the Yemeni coastal city of Mukalla which was recaptured by government and Emirati soldiers in April after a year-long occupation by al Qaeda, local officials said.

Amid fierce fighting after the Taliban captured the northern Afghan city of Kunduz last year, U.S. special forces advisers repeatedly asked their commanders how far they were allowed to go to help local troops retake the city.

The United States and its allies targeted Islamic State in Iraq with 17 air strikes on Saturday, and hit the militant group with eight air strikes in Syria, the U.S. military said on Sunday.

The three main church denominations in Egypt sent a drafted law on the renovation and construction of churches to Chancellor Madgy al-Agaty, Legal Affairs Minister in the House of Representatives, on Saturday.

Officials say multiple attacks in and around Iraq have killed at least 12 people. Police say the deadliest in Sunday’s attacks was in Baghdad’s western suburb of Abu Ghraib when a suicide bomber blew up himself outside a funeral tent for the wife of a local official, killing three policemen and two civilians. At least 16 others were wounded in that attack.