Forces aligned with Libya's unity government were engaged in fierce clashes with Islamic State on Thursday in the group's stronghold of Sirte, but were facing resistance from snipers as they edged toward the city center.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday rebuked Saudi Arabia and its allies for resorting to "undue pressure" to remove the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen from a blacklist of child rights violators.

The appearance of brightly colored copies of the Quran in markets this Ramadan has caused a stir in religious circles, fueling an ongoing debate about the approprate colours for the Muslim holy book.

A car bomb attack by Kurdish militants on a police station in southeastern Turkey killed three people and wounded more than 30 on Wednesday, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said, a day after a bomb targeting police in Istanbul killed 11.

Islamic State fighters withdrew from frontlines with Syrian rebel forces north of Aleppo on Wednesday as they mounted a counter attack against the jihadist group near the Turkish border, an opposition source and monitoring group said.

A Central Security Forces conscript was killed by a bomb blast to the south of Sheikh Zuwaid city, North Sinai, on Tuesday.

A Giza misdemeanor court sentenced on Tuesday two pro-Morsi TV hosts in absentia to two years in jail for incitement against state institutions and spreading false news and rumours.

A government report which investigated alleged links between the Muslim Brotherhood and terrorism was a waste of taxpayer money whose delay empowered dictatorships repressing the group, one expert told the UK parliament’s foreign affairs committee on Tuesday.

An Islamist party in Tunisia condemned an official ban on its scheduled annual congress on Saturday and accused the authorities of seeking a confrontation.

More than 2,000 militants have gathered in northern Aleppo, the Russian ceasefire-monitoring center in Syria said on Saturday.

Thirty soldiers from Niger and two from Nigeria were killed in a Boko Haram attack by “hundreds of assailants” on Friday on the southeastern town of Bosso close to the border with Nigeria, the Niger defence ministry said on Saturday.

A Frenchman reported to be carrying weapons and explosives for a planned attack in France was arrested on the Ukrainian-Polish border in late May, the Ukrainian Border Guard said on Saturday.

An Iranian-backed Shia Iraqi militia said on Saturday it planned to storm Fallujah, Islamic State (IS) group's stronghold near Baghdad, once civilians left the city, backtracking on earlier statements that it would leave this task to the Iraqi army.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis met on Monday the grand imam of Egypt's highest Islamic authority, Al-Azhar, looking to heal Vatican relations with the influential centre of Sunni Muslim learning after dialogue was frozen five years ago.

CAIRO: A total of 499 Palestinians crossed the Egypt-Gaza border crossing of Rafah over 14 hours Wednesday in both directions; the crossing will remain open for three more days, Youm7 reported an Egyptian official at the crossing as saying Thursday.

US-backed Syrian fighters advanced against Islamic State in the last tract of territory the group holds near the Turkish border on Wednesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.

Islamic State on Tuesday urged Muslims to destroy their satellite TV sets to prevent hostile channels “destroying their beliefs and polluting their ethics”.

Iraqi forces struggled Wednesday to break into Fallujah city centre where hundreds of fighters from the Islamic State group and some 50,000 increasingly desperate civilians were holed up.

Iraq has delayed its assault on the city of Falluja because of fears for the safety of civilians, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Wednesday, as his forces halted at the city’s edge in the face of ferocious resistance from Islamic State fighters.

Six soldiers were killed and 6 others were injured when two improvised explosive devices (IEDs) targeted an army patrol in Egypt's restive Sinai Peninsula, Al-Ahram Arabic news website reported.