Syrian forces pressed their offensive against the Islamic State group (IS) on Monday, the day after seizing control of the ancient city of Palmyra in a major blow for the militants.

An Alexandria court sentenced on Sunday a police officer to three years in prison for torturing Salafist Sayed Belal to death, his lawyer Maged Ali told Ahram Online. The ruling marks a significant reduction in the convicted officer’s previous prison sentence.

Russian ground forces did not take part in the Syrian army’s operation to drive Islamic State fighters out of the city of Palmyra, but the Russian air force did and it will continue assisting Syrian government troops, the Kremlin said on Monday.

Israel urged its citizens in Turkey on Monday to leave “as soon as possible” in an upgraded travel advisory predicting possible follow-up attacks to the March 19 suicide bombing in Istanbul blamed on Islamic State.

Chiefs of staff of the Islamic coalition formed by Saudi Arabia to counter terrorism highlighted the importance of the military and the exchange of information in fighting terrorism in a Sunday statement.

Sinai Province” claims it killed 15 state-security soldiers by planting explosive devices on roads situated in Sheikh Zuweid and Rafah, according to Aamaq, a news agency affiliated with “Islamic State” (IS). The agency reported early Sunday that “Sinai Province” militants intercepted a counter-attack by the Egyptian Armed Forces and captured two tanks.

A bomb disposal unit has dismantled a bomb in Arish. No casualties have been reported. North Sinai security services were notified when an unidentied object was found on al-Bahr street, Arish city. Police troops, a bomb disposal unit and ambulance crew were called to the place where the object was found. The area was cordoned off and traffic blocked for security reasons.

A Turkish soldier was killed and another wounded in northern Iraq on Saturday when rockets fired by Islamic State during clashes with Iraqi Kurdish fighters landed in a base where Turkish troops were deployed, the army said.

Syrian government forces recaptured Palmyra on Sunday, state media and a monitoring group said, inflicting a significant defeat on the Islamic State group which seized the city last year and dynamited its ancient temples.

Saudi-led coalition warplanes carried out a series of raids in southern Yemen on Sunday targeting Al-Qaeda positions that killed five suspected militants, a Yemeni military official said.

The Taliban faction Jamaat-ul-Ahrar has claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack that killed at least 65 people in the Pakistani city of Lahore on Sunday, saying the target of its attack was Muslim Pakistan's small Christian minority.

Algerian security forces shot dead an Islamist militant wearing a suicide bomb belt before he could detonate his explosives in a small town east of the capital Algiers, the state news agency APS said on Thursday. The militant had been evading Algerian troops patrolling on Wednesday night around Maatkas near Tizi Ouzou in the mountainous region in what was once the stronghold of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

Pro-government forces pushed a fierce bid to recapture Syria's ancient city of Palmyra from jihadists Thursday as Moscow hosted top US diplomat John Kerry for talks on the fraught peace process. The Islamic State group called on civilians still living in Palmyra to leave, as army and pro-government militia battled the jihadists on several fronts along the city's western ring, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

The Iraqi military backed by US-led coalition aircraft on Thursday launched a long-awaited operation to recapture the northern city of Mosul from Islamic State militants, a military spokesman said.

A brother of Brussels suicide bomber Najim Laachraoui on Thursday condemned his actions, saying he had no contact with him since he left for Syria. It was the first public reaction from a family member of one of the Brussels attackers. Security sources have told local media that Najim Laachraoui, a 25-year-old Belgian, was one of Tuesday’s airport suicide bombers. He had left Brussels for Syria in February 2013.

Pope Francis washed the feet of 11 young asylum seekers and a worker at their reception centre on Thursday to highlight the need for the international community to provide shelter to refugees. Several of the asylum seekers, one holding a baby in her arms, were reduced to tears as the 79-year-old pontiff kneeled before them, pouring water over their feet, drying them with a towel and bending to kiss them.

Pope Francis on Wednesday called for “unanimous condemnation” of extremist attacks in Brussels and elsewhere and urged prayers to convert hearts “blinded by cruel fundamentalism.”

The two brothers who blew themselves up in the deadly train and airport attacks in Brussels were known by police for serious crimes and are linked to November's Paris massacre. Khalid and Ibrahim El Bakraoui are Belgian nationals with major convictions "not linked to terrorism", federal prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said at a dramatic news briefing on Wednesday.

Tunisian police have broken up a cell recruiting fighters for Islamic State in Libya, authorities said, part of a security crackdown on jihadists crossing the border.

The United States and its allies staged 25 strikes against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria on Tuesday in the U.S.-lead coalition’s latest round of daily attacks on the militant group, the Combined Joint Task Force leading the operations said.

A Japanese man who had attempted to join the Islamic State militant group has been detained by Turkish security forces near the Syrian border on Wednesday, security sources said.