Syria's air force deliberately bombed water sources in December, a war crime that cut off water for 5.5 million people in and around the capital Damascus, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria said on Tuesday.

Syria's war has killed just over 320,000 people since it erupted six years ago, a monitor said Monday, noting that a fragile ceasefire had helped to slow the rising death toll.

A police officer says a suicide car bomber has detonated near a hotel in Somalia's capital, killing at least six people and injuring four others.

Some 48 families have received apartments in Mostaqbal City, Ismailia governorate, said Father Youssef Shoukry, the pastor of Saint Bishoy Coptic Orthodox Church in Ismailia, who is in charge of the welfare of Coptic Christian families that fled systematic attacks by terrorists in al-Arish, North Sinai.

The Vatican is examining the possibility of Pope Francis visiting Egypt but no dates or schedule have been set, his spokesman said Saturday after Italian reports suggested the trip would happen in May.

A North Sinai police colonel was killed Wednesday night in a bomb attack on a security checkpoint in North Sinai, Egypt’s interior ministry announced.

The Alexandria Criminal Court sentenced on Thursday a defendant to death, charged with first-degree murder and caught on CCTV cameras slaughtering a Coptic alcohol merchant earlier in January.

U.S. and Iraqi officials believe the leader of IS group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has left operational commanders behind with diehard followers to fight the battle of Mosul, and is now hiding out in the desert, focusing mainly on his own survival.

Palestine’s Hamas movement is moving towards declaring a Palestinian state according to the 1967 borders, without first recognizing an Israeli state, London-based newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reported on Wednesday. Any official statement concerning alterations to the charter, issued by the bloc governing the Gaza Strip, will be verified and released after holding elections in April.

Security authorities in North Sinai reported that seven extremists were killed in different crackdowns across the governorate's cities over the past few days. Three others were injured, and six wanted extremists and five suspects were arrested.

Elite Iraqi security forces dislodged Islamic State militants from the main government buildings in Mosul on Tuesday, their last major city stronghold in Iraq, an Iraqi spokesman said. Mosul's main museum, which was damaged and looted by the militants, was also taken, Lieutenant Colonel Abdel Amir al-Mohammadawi, a spokesman for the elite interior ministry Rapid Response units told Reuters.

The mouth of the tunnel is hardly visible on a muddy hillside overlooking Mosul, where fighting now rages between Iraqi forces and Islamic State militants.

Last February, an Egyptian court of urgent matters designated the militant group Hasm a terrorist organisation, banning its activity in the country.

The number of Coptic families who have fled North Sinai’s El-Arish for Port Said after a series attacks on Christians has risen to 28 families with 93 members, priest Armia Fahmy, the spokesperson of the Port Said Coptic archbishopric, told Ahram Arabic website on Sunday.

Copts in Nazlet al-Nakhl village in Minya claim to have been banned from performing the mass by security on Sunday over alleged fears of attacks by extremists against them.

Al-Qaeda has confirmed that top leader Abu Khayr al-Masri, believed to be the organisation's number two, was killed in a drone strike by the US-led coalition in Syria. The killing of Masri, described by analysts as "jihadi royalty," could serve as a major security coup for US President Donald Trump early in his presidency.

Vowing to plant their flag in China and that blood will "flow in rivers", a video released this week purportedly by the Islamic State group shows ethnic Uighur fighters training in Iraq, underscoring what Beijing sees as a serious threat.

Amnesty International says the Egyptian government has failed to protect hundreds of Coptic Christians who fled their homes in northern Sinai after a series of attacks by Islamic State militants. The London-based rights group on Wednesday said the government's response fits with a pattern of failing to protect the embattled minority, adding that after other sectarian attacks the government sought reconciliation agreements between communities rather than prosecuting those responsible.

The leading religious authority in Sunni Islam has lashed out at supporters of abortion rights, sexual reassignment and globalization, saying they aim to "annihilate all Abrahamic religions." Grand Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayyeb, head of Egypt's Al-Azhar, said in a speech Tuesday that "those advocating human rights and global peace" are often secretly colluding with terrorists, and that globalization threatens the unique character of different nations.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said his government is providing all necessary measures to help residents who have fled Arish, a city in Egypt's North Sinai governorate, after the Islamic State group killed several members of the Christian community.

While Saint Anthony's Church in Ismailia declared the state of emergency, Al-Masry Al-Youm (AMAY) was there, as both the church and the state attempt to contain the crisis of the Coptic Christian families displaced from northern Sinai. AMAY spent hours with the children who are being treated psychologically to overcome the crisis, Families are flocking to the church and others have been housed; children play in the gardens of Ismailia; but an atmosphere of ambiguity surrounds the fate of about 100 Coptic Christian families forced by terrorism to abandon their homes in Al-Arish city of North Sinai, leaving everything behind to take the worries and sorrows of displacement.