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.

Minya Criminal Court has handed down 12 death sentences and 157 life prison terms for crimes relating to the storming of a police station in 2013. The defendants were convicted on Monday of various acts of violence, including murder, as well as the storming of Matay police station and setting it on fire.

Coptic couples affected by personal status laws participated in a divorce ceremony on Saturday evening– the first of its kind for followers of the Christian sect. The participants celebrated their ‘second chance’, stressing the need to adopt a civil law that guarantees Copts the right to divorce and re-marry, and expressing condemnation of the Church’s negligence on the matter.

On 16 July, the Egyptian Armed Forces launched the fourth phase of Operation Martyr s Right, which aims to counter militant and terrorist activity in Sinai, 10 days after 26 Egyptian security personnel were killed in an attack in North Sinai s Rafah city. During the fourth stage of the operation, the army said that its forces killed 40 militants involved in the 7 July attack.

France has seen 271 Islamists militants return from war zones in Iraq and Syria and all of them are subject to investigation by public prosecutors, the country s interior minister said in a newspaper interview. Some 700 French nationals are estimated to have fought in Islamic State group ranks in Iraq and Syria, and like other European countries France has been wrestling with how to handle the flow of so-called returnees.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said on Thursday the country s intelligence agency had downgraded the threat level to aviation after an alleged "Islamic-inspired" plot to bring down a plane was uncovered and disrupted. Four men were arrested in raids in several suburbs in Sydney, Australia s largest city, at the weekend and held without charge under special terror-related powers. One man has since been released.

More than a hundred buses carrying thousands of al-Qaeda-linked fighters and Syrian refugees drove down a dirt road from Lebanon into Syria on Wednesday, in what was the last phase of an exchange deal between Syria s al-Qaeda branch and Lebanon s militant Hezbollah group. The departure of al-Qaeda fighters from the Lebanon-Syria border comes three years to the day its fighters stormed the Lebanese border town of Arsal and captured two dozen soldiers, killing some in captivity and releasing others. The group s presence in Lebanon has left scores of people dead.

Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on a Shia mosque in Afghanistan that killed and wounded dozens of people on Tuesday, the group s official agency AMAQ said on Wednesday. "About 50 Shia were killed and 80 wounded in an attack by Islamic State militants yesterday on a Husseiniya in the city of Herat in western Afghanistan," AMAQ said.

A car bomb explosion in the southern Somali town of Kismayo wounded at least 10 people on Tuesday, police and residents said. The blast occurred on a busy road in the port city once prized by warlords and the Islamist militant group al Shabaab for its money-spinning charcoal trade, said Mohamud, a police officer who gave his first name only. "We believe it was a car bomb parked here in this busy street. So far we know 10 civilians were injured," he told Reuters.

Swedish radio says that U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces are holding Islamic State (IS) militants from Sweden. Tuesday s report comes as the U.S-backed forces are battling in northern Syria to retake the city of Raqqa, IS de facto capital of the militants self-proclaimed caliphate.

The Egyptian Cassation Court decided on Monday to acquit Mohamed al-Zawahiri, the brother of Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, from charges of establishing and managing an affiliated terrorist group. Charges also included plans to attack state institutions and the Egyptian Armed Forces, according to the state-run official TV channel.

Uganda s military said on Monday it had lost 12 soldiers in an attack claimed by Shabaab militants in southern Somalia. The Al-Qaeda linked insurgents ambushed Ugandan troops that are part of an African Union force as they patrolled a supply route in the hotly-contested Lower Shebelle region, the military said in a statement.

Islamic State group claimed responsibility on Monday for a suicide attack that targeted the Iraqi embassy in the Afghan capital Kabul, the group s Amaq news agency reported. Afghan security forces battled gunmen near a police compound and the nearby Iraqi embassy on Monday. They said the attackers appeared to have taken cover in the embassy building in a business district of the city, from where smoke could be seen rising.

Hezbollah and the Nusra Front will exchange the corpses of fighters on Sunday in the first stage of a ceasefire agreement in the Lebanon-Syria border area, the Hezbollah-affiliated al-Manar television station reported. The ceasefire took effect on Thursday and will also involve the release of five Hezbollah prisoners and the departure of Nusra fighters to northern Syria along with any civilians who wish to go with them.

Pope Francis is urging the world to show a greater commitment to fighting human trafficking, which he called "a form of modern slavery."

Restorers working at the Monastery of St. Bishoy in the Wadi El-Natroun area have uncovered a number of medieval-era wall-paintings and architectural elements in the monastery s old church. “While removing the modern layer of mortar from the walls of the monastery s old church, several coloured wall-paintings were uncovered,” Mohamed Abdellatif, deputy antiquities minister for archaeological sites, told Ahram Online. He explained that the paintings date from between the 9th and 13th centuries AD, which will help archaeologists to determine the original architectural style of the church and the dates of its construction. According to historical books and religious documents, he said, the church was subjected to changes and modifications in its architecture in 840 AD, during the Abbasid era, and in 1069 AD, during the Fatimid caliphate.

Second Field Army forces destroyed on Wednesday three armed vehicles and three improvised explosive device (IED) workshops, in the fourth stage of the “Haq el-Shaheed” (translation: Martyr’s Right) operation, official spokesperson of the Armed Forces Colonel Tamer el-Refai announced.

Egypt s Al-Azhar – considered the world s highest seat of Sunni Islamic learning – announced that it would hold an international conference on Jerusalem in late September to discuss the Palestinian-Israeli issue "with relevant institutions and bodies," according to a statement reported by state news agency MENA. Senior Al-Azhar scholars said on Tuesday that the recent actions of Israeli occupation authorities in Jerusalem are "are not based on any humanitarian or civilised principles." Al-Azhar issued the statement after holding a meeting headed by the institution s Grand Imam Ahmed El-Tayyeb.

Egypt s interior ministry said on Wednesday that security forces have killed four terrorists and arrested two in two separate raids in Giza targeting those behind an attack on a checkpoint in mid-July that killed five security personnel. The interior ministry s statement said that security officials identified two hideouts for members of the group behind the 14 July attack on a checkpoint in the Giza town of El-Badrashin, one in the satellite city of 6 October and another in Giza s Haram district.