The six-member Gulf Cooperation Council has designated Hezbollah a terrorist organisation, it said on Wednesday, ratcheting up pressure on theIran-allied group that wields influence in Lebanon and plays a key role in the Syrian crisis.

US Special Operations Forces captured a significant Islamic State operative in Iraq, the New York Times reported on Tuesday, the first suspected raid by a new force sent in recent weeks to target the jihadist group's fighters and leaders.

Jordan's security services said on Wednesday they had thwarted a plot by Islamic State militants to blow up civilian and military targets, in one of the US ally's largest sweeps in years against hardline sleeper cells.

Three soldiers were killed Wednesday during an attack on an army patrol near Sinai’s Sheikh Zuweid. An IED ambush caught the patrol near Al-Wahshi checkpoint. At least one soldier was injured, according to local reports. The army is yet to officially announce an account of the attack.

Port Said Criminal Court cut on Tuesday a life prison sentence of a Mohamed Morsi supporter, which he got in absentia, to six months following a retrial. Ahmed Ibrahim Monsef was handed the jail term for storming Al-Arab police station in coastal city Port Said in August 2013.

Islamic State’s deadliest attacks for months in and around Baghdad could be a sign that Iraqi forces are stretched thin after recent advances to reclaim territory from the group, according to some military commanders and a provincial official.

The U.S.-led coalition conducted 27 strikes against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria on Monday in its latest round of daily attacks, according to the Combined Joint Task Force leading the operations.

Russia warned on Tuesday of a growing threat of Islamic State and other groups waging chemical warfare in the Middle East and called for global negotiations on a new pact to combat what he called “a grave reality of our time”.

The Giza Criminal Court postponed Tuesday the retrial of the Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie and 36 others in the case known as the "Rabaa Operations Room" to March 7.

The US did not consult with Libyan authorities on those strikes, says Libyan army spokesman A Libyan official in the city of Bani Waleed told local media that unknown jets carried out air strikes Sunday against a convoy suspected to be related to “Islamic State” (IS) militias near the city.

Unknown assailants shot dead four policemen on duty in Egypt’s Qalyoubiya governorate on Sunday, a security source told state news agency MENA.

A twin suicide bombing claimed by Islamic State killed 70 people in a Shi'ite district of Baghdad on Sunday in the deadliest attack inside the capital this year, as militants launched an assault on its western outskirts.

Iraqi officials say the death toll from back-to-back market bombings carried out by the Islamic State group the previous day in eastern Baghdad has climbed to 73.

Turkey intends to invite Egypt to the to the 13th Summit of Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Istanbul next April, Turkey’s foreign ministry spokesperson said on Friday.

Aircraft attacked a convoy carrying suspected Islamic State militants near the northwestern Libyan town of Bani Walid early on Sunday, an official said.

Father Theodore Al Antoui from Anba Antonius Monastery in Egypt’s Eastern Desert was consecrated the new Coptic Orthodox Bishop of Jerusalem Sunday following the death of Anba Abraham, Youm7 reported.

The United States and its allies conducted 24 strikes against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria on Saturday, the coalition leading the operations said in a statement on Sunday.

Patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church Pope Tawadros II enthroned a new Coptic Orthodox Metropolitan Archbishop for Jerusalem and the Near East on Sunday. Archbishop Theodor Antonine was ordained in a ceremony attended by the ambassadors of Palestine and Syria, according to a statement posted on Pope Tawadros II's official website. He was ordained in the name Antonios, in honour of Saint Anotny. The latter is also known as Antony of Egypt and is considered to be the Father of All Monks, Egyptian state news agency MENA reported.

Cairo Criminal Court sentenced three people to 10 years of hard labor Sunday during a retrial of the case known as the “Zeitoun terrorist cell,” Youm7 reported.

Four Coptic Christian school students ages 15 and 16, have been sentenced to five years in jail on charges of contempt of religion.

The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee of the US House of Representatives approved on Wednesday a bill that urges for the US State Department to either list the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization or justify the reason for not doing so.