Until the summer of 2016, South Sudan s Yei region was a leafy oasis in the midst of the country s civil war. But when a national peace deal broke down and government soldiers ransacked the area, a handful of UN and US officials begged their leaders for help. The United Nations must send peacekeepers to Yei to protect civilians from President Salva Kiir s forces, who are burning villages and slaughtering men, women and children, they argued. And the US needs to change its approach in the face of a potential genocide, they warned.

In a brief statement before a conference on "The role of fatwas (Islamic edicts) in stabilising society", Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Ahmed El-Tayeb said Islam s teachings and legacy face an unprecedented wave of distortion at the hands of those who issue fatwas without licences and adequate knowledge. "Unfortunately, some have been allowed to issue flawed fatwas that distort Islamic Sharia and violate Islam s true teachings," said El-Tayeb, urging Islamic scholars and clerics to take utmost care when issuing fatwas.

US-backed forces took full control of Raqa from the Islamic State (IS) militant group on Tuesday, defeating the last IS holdouts in the de facto Syrian capital of their now-shattered "caliphate". The victory caps a battle of more than four months for Raqa, and hammers another nail in the coffin of the IS experiment in statehood, which has collapsed in the face of offensives in Syria and Iraq.

US-backed militias said they had defeated Islamic State in its former capital Raqqa on Tuesday, raising their flags over the jihadist group’s last footholds in the city after a four-month battle. The fighting was over but the alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias was clearing the stadium of mines and any remaining militants, said Rojda Felat, commander of the Raqqa campaign for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

Cairo was named on Monday as the most dangerous megacity for women by an international poll with women’s rights experts saying the treatment of women in the Egyptian capital has worsened since a 2011 uprising seeking social change. Cairo came out worst when the Thomson Reuters Foundation asked experts on women’s issues in 19 megacities how well women are protected from sexual violence, harmful cultural practices, and about access to healthcare and finance..

A senior security source at the Interior Ministry announced the death of three policemen in a terrorist attack on a branch of the National Bank of Egypt in central Sinai on Monday. In a statement to the Middle East News Agency on Monday, the security source said that a number of terrorists attacked the bank and planted five explosive devices in the vicinity of the branch.

The death toll from the most powerful bomb blast witnessed in Somalia’s capital rose to 189 with more than 200 injured, making it the deadliest single attack ever in the Horn of Africa nation, police and hospital sources said Sunday. Doctors struggled to assist horrifically wounded victims, many burnt beyond recognition. Officials feared the toll would continue to climb from Saturday’s truck bomb that targeted a busy street near key ministries. Sources for the death toll spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to reporters.

The army fended off a terror attack on a security checkpoint in the Kawadis area in North Sinai on Sunday, killing 24 militants, a statement by army spokesperson Tamer El-Refaei said. The spokesperson added that six army personnel were killed during the fight.

A Coptic priest affiliated with a church in Upper Egypt’s governorate of Beni Suef was killed on Thursday due to being stabbed by a man in Cairo’s northeastern suburb of El–Marg, state-run newspaper of Akhbar Al Youm reported. The priest, Samaan Shehta, was in Cairo when a young unemployed man blocked the way in front of the priest’s vehicle and asked him to step down from it. He then hit the priest’s head with cleaver and ran away, a local journalist told Egypt Independent on condition of anonymity.

Pope Francis will talk peace on his to visit Myanmar, a Catholic church representative said Thursday, a potentially highly charged trip during a refugee crisis that has seen 520,000 Rohingya Muslims pushed out of the country. The late November visit comes as western Rakhine state is devoured by communal violence that has sent unprecedented numbers of Rohingya fleeing into neighbouring Bangladesh.

Pakistan s electoral commission on Wednesday barred from contesting elections a new political party that is backed by an Islamist with a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head, a government official said. Haroon Khan, a spokesman for the commission, said a four-man panel rejected the registration of Milli Muslim League (MML) as an official political party. Khan said Muhammad Raza Khan, chief of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), told MML s lawyer at the final hearing of the registration that the new party has links with militant groups and as such "We can t enlist you."

Talks for the safe exit of civilians trapped in Syria s Raqa were underway Wednesday, as US-backed forces prepare a final push to recapture the city from the Islamic State (IS) militant group. The Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters, have taken around 90 percent of the city from IS since they broke into the city in June. The US-backed militia has surrounded remaining IS fighters in just a handful of positions, but thousands of civilians are still in the city, some of them being used as human shields by IS.

A Cairo criminal court has sentenced eight men to a death for acts of violence related to the storming of Helwan Police Station on 14 August 2013. In Tuesday s sentencing, another 50 defendants were handed life sentences, seven given 10 years in prison and three defendants handed five years, all in the same case.

Two staff members were killed and several students were wounded in Kenya when gunmen fired on vehicles carrying students to the Technical University of Mombasa s campus in coastal Kwale county on Tuesday, a police official and a witness said. The identity of the gunmen was unclear.

Traditionally, permanently tattooing the body has long been considered a sin in Islam because it involves “mutilating” the body, changing Allah’s creation, inflicting unnecessary pain and introducing the possibility of infection, according to scholars who had outlined possible reasons as to why the act is considered a sin. A new fatwa by Egypt’s former Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa challenges this traditional view, after he stated that inking is permissible for girls, but a sin for boys.

An Egyptian juvenile misdeaneamor court has acquitted 4 Al-Azhar University students on charges of illegally gathering and rioting in front of the university during demonstrations against the overthrow of former president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013. The defendants were also accused by prosecutors of of vandalizing public property and assault on police officers tasked with securing the universitys perimeter.

A final assault on Islamic State group s last line of defence in its former Syrian capital Raqqa should begin on Sunday night, a field commander for the U.S.-backed forces operating there said. The loss of Islamic State group s remaining streets and buildings in Raqqa following its defeat in Iraq s Mosul this year and its retreat from swathes of territory in both countries, would mark a major milestone in the battle to destroy the jihadist group.

Giza Criminal Court has referred the death sentences of 13 Agnad Masr militants to the Grand Mufti for approval following their conviction on terrorism-related charges, including killing policemen. The court issued the order on Sunday, setting a date of 7 December for handing down the final verdicts in the case. Referral to the Grand Mufti is a necessary procedure before issuing a death sentence, according to Egyptian law, though the religious opinion of the Mufti is non-binding.

Turkish archaeologists believe they may have discovered the remains of St. Nicholas — from whom the legend of Santa Claus emerged — beneath a church at his birthplace in southern Turkey, an official said Thursday. St. Nicholas was born and served as a bishop of what is now the Turkish Mediterranean town of Demre, near Antalya, in the 4th century. He was buried in the area formerly known as Myra, but his bones were believed to have been stolen and taken to the southern Italian town of Bari.

President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi asserted once more Egypt s support to the unity of the Palestinian people as the government of national unity convened in Gaza for the first time since 2014. Praising the Palestinian reconciliation that Egypt sponsored, the president said Tuesday that “history will hold accountable those who waste opportunities to achieve peace.” He added that there is a real chance to implement peace in the region and that there must be cooperation to ensure “Palestine s seriousness towards it.” The message follows a previous urge to Palestinians to unite and co-exist with Israel, which the Egyptian president had conveyed during his speech before the 72nd session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA 72) in New York in September.

Egyptian intelligence chief and presidential special envoy Khaled Fawzy has returned back to Cairo, following a visit to Gaza and Ramallah on Tuesday to oversee the implementation of the national reconciliation agreement between Hamas and Fatah, which came with Cairo s collaboration. Before concluding his visit, Fawzy invited Hamas and Fatah leaders to meet in Cairo next week to discuss further moves in reconciliation, which is set to include another comprehensive meeting for all Palestinian factions to activate a reconciliation agreement reached in Cairo in 2015.