Taliban fighters have killed 12 security forces in the last 48 hours in clashes in Afghanistan s western province of Badghis, the defence ministry said Monday. In the latest assault on Afghan forces -- who have faced devastating losses in recent years -- Taliban fighters last week smashed through government lines near the city of Bala Murghab, seizing several checkpoints.

Eastern Libyan forces carried out air strikes on the southern part of Tripoli on Sunday and made progress towards the city centre, residents said, escalating an operation to take the capital as the United Nations failed to achieve a truce. The Libyan National Army (LNA) force of Khalifa Haftar, which backs a parallel administration in the east, last week launched an advance on Tripoli in the west, home to the internationally recognised government.

Armed groups from the western Libyan city of Misrata have started moving toward Tripoli to defend the capital against possible advance by Eastern forces, residents said on Thursday.

Houthi forces denied the United Nations access to a grain storage site in the Yemeni port of Hodeidah on Tuesday, sources familiar with the matter said, hindering efforts to increase food aid to millions facing severe hunger. Hodeidah is the entry point for most of Yemen s humanitarian aid and commercial imports. World Food Programme (WFP) grain stores there have been cut off in the conflict zone for six months, putting the contents at risk of rotting.

U.S.-backed Syrian fighters are battling the Islamic State group in eastern Syria 10 days after declaring victory over the extremists, an official with the Kurdish-led force said Tuesday. Mustafa Bali, a spokesman for the Syrian Democratic Forces, said they are rooting out groups of militants who were hiding in caves in and near the village of Baghouz. He added that SDF experts are still removing mines and booby-traps in areas liberated in recent weeks.

Thirty men were sentenced on Saturday to between 10 years and life in prison for planning a suicide bombing on a church in the Egyptian city of Alexandria and other charges, court officials said. The authorities said at the time of their arrest that the defendants had embraced the ideas of the Islamic State and had received training abroad and in Egypt.

Pope Francis will hold mass Sunday for nearly 10,000 members of Morocco s Catholic minority, on the second day of a visit during which he has already met migrants and trainee imams. The Argentine pontiff will begin the day at a social centre near Rabat, before meeting religious leaders at the cathedral in the Moroccan capital.

At least 15 people died when a bomb exploded on a busy street and ripped into a nearby restaurant in Somalia s capital on Thursday, medics said. Security officials and witnesses reported bodies strewn on the ground as plumes of smoke rose high into the air after the bomb detonated on Mogadishu s Maka Al-Mukarama road, one of the seaside capital s main thoroughfares, an area busy with businesses and travellers. It struck as people were eating lunch.

Ten people were killed along with two suicide bombers in a coordinated attack late Tuesday by Boko Haram jihadists on a town in eastern Niger, the local mayor said. "Two female suicide bombers blew themselves up and gunmen then attacked civilians," the mayor of the town of N Guigmi, Abba Kaya Issa, told AFP on Wednesday.

Cross-border fighting between Israel and Hamas abated on Tuesday after a day of Palestinian rocket attacks and Israeli air strikes but Israel said it reserved the right to strike again and kept its troops and tanks massed at the Gaza frontier. The biggest Israeli-Palestinian escalation in months, which began on Monday with the longest-range Palestinian rocket attack to cause casualties in Israel for five years, appeared to have been curbed overnight by Egyptian mediation.

The Israeli military said on Monday it had begun carrying out strikes on Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, hours after a Palestinian rocket struck a house near Tel Aviv. Reuters witnesses heard explosions in Gaza just before the military put out its statement. The military said in a statement that it had "begun striking Hamas targets throughout the Gaza Strip."

Air strikes in the northern Afghan province of Kunduz killed about a dozen civilians on Saturday, local officials said, as battle intensified there and in southern Helmand province. The air strikes killed 13 civilians, said Safiullah Amiri, a member of Kunduz provincial council. The casualties included children, said fellow council member Amruddin, who pegged the civilian death toll at 12.

Fears are growing that neo-Nazis and Islamic State militants alike may be using the Internet to support their activities, making it a breeding ground for terrorism and extremism. The “Dark Web,” a platform for both Nazi enthusiasts and Islamic State (IS) militants, has come under scrutiny in Europe. The argument that more Internet encryption is necessarily beneficial to democracy, privacy and cyber-security was dealt a severe blow as details emerged of the tools utilised during the anti-Muslim massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand, earlier this week.

Warplanes flew near Baghouz in eastern Syria early on Wednesday, a Reuters witness said, as the final remnants of the Islamic State group held a narrow strip of land along the Euphrates in a last-ditch defence of its dwindling territory. Defeat there would signal the end of the ultra-hardline Islamist movement s control in eastern Syria, having held more than a third of Syria and Iraq at one point in 2014 as it sought to carve out a huge caliphate in the region.

The Jewish Community closed New Zealand s synagogues in a show of religious support and unity on the Saturday Sabbath following the mass shootings at al Noor Mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre in Christchurch, leaving at least 50 Muslims dead and dozens injured. Jewish officials called the precaution an “unprecedented move” as a country s synagogues have never closed on a Saturday in recorded history to date.

Four Egyptian nationals were among those killed in the New Zealand mosque attack, Egypt s Minister of Immigration, Nabila Markam, said on Saturday. Makram said that the ministry agreed with the Misr El Kheir Foundation (MEK) to transfer the bodies of victims to Egypt if their families requested that.

A U.N. envoy condemned Gaza s ruling Hamas group on Sunday for what he called its campaign of arrests and violence in confronting street protests over the past few days against high prices. Hundreds of people have taken to the streets across the enclave in "We want to live" demonstrations. Human rights officials said dozens of people have been detained or hurt.

U.S.-backed fighters besieging Islamic State s final shred of territory in eastern Syria said they had pushed further into the enclave following clashes and air strikes by the U.S.-led coalition. "Our fighters advanced deep into areas controlled by the terrorist organisation and established a number of new points, following clashes in which terrorists sustained a number of deaths and injuries," a statement from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) press office said.

The U.S. State Department on Wednesday slammed human rights violations in China, saying the sort of abuses it had inflicted on its Muslim minorities had not been seen "since the 1930s." U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo highlighted abuses in Iran, South Sudan, Nicaragua and China in the department s annual "Country Reports on Human Rights Practices," but told reporters that China was "in a league of its own when it comes to human rights violations."

At least 20 civilians, including women and children, have been killed in a village in northern Yemen, Saudi and Houthi media reported on Monday, in an attack both sides blamed on the other. The Houthis Al Masirah television said air strikes by a Saudi-led coalition killed 23 civilians in Kushar district. Saudi-owned Al Arabiya TV said the Houthis had killed several members of the Hajour tribes who had begun an uprising against the movement. It quoted unnamed sources as saying 20 women and children from two families were killed.