The Syrian army has reinforced its anti-aircraft defences near the frontier with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, a commander in the regional alliance that backs President Bashar al-Assad said on Tuesday. Additional defences are set to be deployed in the coming days, the commander told Reuters. The stationing of the Russian-made Pantsir S1 weapon aims "to renew the air defence system against Israel in the first degree", added the commander, a non-Syrian who spoke on condition of anonymity.

At least 15 pro-Islamic State militants were killed when Philippine troops launched air and ground assaults against a rebel bomb factory on Sunday, a military commander said. Air strikes and artillery pounded an area in the Liguasan marsh in Maguindanao, where the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) group had been making improvised explosive devices, said Brigadier General Cirilito Sobejana.

A suicide bomber killed 12 people and wounded more than 30 on Monday at the entrance to Afghanistans rural development ministry in the west of the capital, a health ministry spokesman said.

At least 16 people were killed and dozens injured after an arms depot exploded in the Sadr City district of the Iraqi capital late Wednesday, security and medical sources said. "An arms depot exploded... The security forces have opened an inquiry to determine the cause," Baghdad s security operations command said in a statement.

The Syrian government re-opened the highway between the cities of Homs and Hama on Wednesday a month after its forces retook a rebel-held pocket that had straddled the road that was closed for almost seven years. Motorists waved Syrian flags as they drove down the highway whose re-opening marked a victory for President Bashar al-Assad, who in recent months has taken control of all rebel-held pockets around the capital Damascus as well as the enclave along the highway which had been under siege for years.

Egypt condemned on Tuesday the "heinous" the terrorist attack in Kabul which left 14 dead, statement by Egypt s Foreign Ministry read. "Egypt strongly condemns the attack carried out by the terrorist organization Daesh on the Grand Council of Muslim Clerics in the Afghan capital," the statement read.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that a bomb blast in northern Syria targeted a military vehicle on Monday on the road from Ain Issa to a military base where some of the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State are located. The blast killed at least one person and injured others of unknown nationality, the Britain-based war monitor reported, in an area controlled by the coalition-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias.

Berlin police said there was no sign that a "rampaging" man with a knife whom they shot and wounded Sunday at the city s main cathedral had had a "terrorist motive". "Based on what we know so far, we have no information that the suspect in any way had a terrorist or Islamist motive," a police spokesman said.

As turmoil spreads through the Middle East, American Jews and Muslims have been forming alliances to build trust and seek solidarity in more ambitious ways than in the past, a sharp contrast to the violence engulfing their homelands this week. Muslims and Jews have dispatched members into mosques and synagogues to learn about each other’s faiths, made a joint trip to tour civil rights sites in the South and formed partnerships involving CEOs of major corporations. Leaders of the groups said the challenging world events have provided impetus for the outreach efforts, including violence in Gaza, the Trump administration’s moving of the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, the travel ban from mostly Muslim countries and deepening concern about hate crimes.

Around a third of Germans would not accept a Muslim into their family, and a fifth would not accept a Jew as a family member, a study has found. The results of the report by the US-based Pew Research Center, released on Tuesday, have come amid heightened anxiety about Islam and anti-Semitism in Germany. What the study found 19 percent of Germans polled responded negatively to the question: “Would you be willing to accept a Jew as a family member?”

Police have found the dead body of a fugitive member of the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist group while pursuing terrorist suspects in a desert area near the Wahat road in Giza governorate, the Egyptian Ministry of Interior said in a statement on Monday. The police conducted the raid to apprehend suspects from the Brotherhood s armed wing who were meeting in the area according to intelligence obtained by the National Security Agency, and after obtaining a warrant from the prosecution.

Many years ago a young Jewish leader asked his followers a question which was all but astounding. He had been working with them quite assiduously. During their work together he was constantly asking them what his contemporaries were saying about him. But one day he pressed the question closer home. It is all very well to say what other people think of me, but what do you think? Who do you say that I am?
This question has gone echoing down the centuries ever since the young Jewish prophet sounded its first note.1 Many have attempted to answer this question by attributing total divinity to Jesus with little concern for his humanity.

Due to the milieu in which I work, I have been informed that the Copts of Egypt as a people have been nominated by a qualified nominator in the United States for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize. This is a peculiar and unique nomination, as this is the first time a group of people have been nominated for the award. Now, I acknowledge that the nomination may be viewed as controversial and unmerited by some, and there is a chance the nomination will not amount to a prize. However, we should look at this nomination as an acknowledgment of the pain, persecution, and ultimately centuries-long perseverance of a people symbolic of all those who have similarly suffered and persevered.

On 17 May, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad arrived in the Russian city of Sochi for an unannounced meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He was not met with the usual presidential protocols, and the Syrian official media did not report the visit until he had returned to Damascus. This is not the first time that Al-Assad has been “summoned” to a meeting with Putin. On 11 December, he met Putin at the Hameim military base in Latakia in Syria, used by Russian forces, where he was obviously patronised by the Russian president.

At least 30 Syrian army troops and Iranian-backed militiamen were killed on Tuesday when Islamic State fighters attacked a military outpost near Palmyra in eastern Syria, a monitor and residents from the area said. They said the militants used suicide bombers and armoured vehicles in the dawn attack near a dam southeast of the ancient Roman city.

A suicide attack Tuesday against a checkpoint in eastern Libya killed at least two militiamen loyal to General Khalifa Haftar, a security source said. The attack south of the city of Ajdabiya comes after the Islamic State group claimed a string of deadly assaults against roadblocks run by Haftar s Libyan National Army (LNA).

Syria s army on Monday was in complete control of the capital and its outskirts for the first time since 2012, after ousting the Islamic State (IS) militant group from a last pocket of resistance. It marked a major milestone in the protracted war, which began in 2011 and saw parts of Damascus fall to armed rebels the following year.

TV series “Khefat Yad” (Light Hand) has been accused of insulting the Christian clergy due to a scene in which actor Mohamed Tharwat disguises as a priest, committing acts of fraud and smoking contrary to the sanctity of his uniform.

Egypt’s military and police forces have killed 19 militants in an exchange of gunfire and arrested 20 suspects, in a continuing crackdown in Sinai, the military said in a statement on Thursday. Security forces launched a large-scale security operation in February to crush militants who have waged an insurgency that has killed hundreds of security forces and residents over many years. The statement said the militants were killed over the past few days. Their deaths bring the total of those killed since the beginning of the operation to at least 296 including 35 military personnel, according to Reuters calculations based on military statements.

Pope Francis on Wednesday condemned the killing of Palestinians near the Gaza-Israel border, saying the deaths would only lead to more violence, and appealed for dialogue to bring justice and peace to the Middle East. "I express my great pain for the dead and wounded and I am close in prayer and affection to all those who are suffering," he told tens of thousands of people at his general audience in St. Peter s Square.

Egypt s Foreign Ministry on Monday hailed the efforts made by Libyan authorities to return the bodies of 20 Egyptian Coptic Orthodox Christians beheaded by the Islamic State group in 2015 and to hold perpetrators accountable. A video released by the Islamic State group in February 2015 showed the beheading of the Egyptian Christians, who were handcuffed and wearing orange jumpsuits.