Damanhour Criminal Court issued Wednesday death sentences on two defrocked monks on charges of killing the head of their desert monastery last summer. The court issued a preliminary death sentence 23 February and referred the sentences handed down on the two monks, Isaiah El-Maqary and Faltaous El-Makary, to the country s grand mufti for his non-binding opinion, as required by Egyptian law.

Sri Lankan police detained 40 people, including a Syrian national, for questioning about the Easter Sunday attacks on churches and hotels, government and military sources said on Tuesday, as the toll from the coordinated bomb attacks rose to 321. About 500 people were also wounded. No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks, which officials said were carried out by at least seven suicide bombers on three churches and four hotels.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Sunday condemned the terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka. “I extend my sincere condolences to the victims of the terrorist acts in Sri Lanka, which are not aimed at a particular country, but are aimed at all humanity,” Sisi said in a tweet on his official Twitter account. “We all have to stand up to our historic responsibility against these actions, which are stripped of all the meanings of humanity,” he added.

At St. Catherine s Monastery at the foot of Egypt s Mount Sinai, the silence in the library is broken only by low electrical humming, as an early manuscript is bathed in green light. A team from Greece are photographing thousands of fragile manuscripts, including some of the earliest copies of the Christian gospels, using a complex process that includes taking images in red, green and blue light and merging them with computer software to create a single high-quality color picture.

German authorities have arrested a man suspected of joining the Islamic State group in Syria and later helping send another new recruit for IS from Germany to Syria. Federal prosecutors said the 28-year-old German national, identified only as Volkan L. in line with German privacy rules, was arrested in Hamburg on Wednesday. He is suspected of membership in a foreign terrorist organization.

Sudanese protesters have hardened their stand, demanding a transitional military council be scrapped and immediately replaced with civilian rule as Tuesday they refused to end a days-long sit-in outside army headquarters. Organizers fear the army is seeking to hijack the revolution on the streets which saw veteran president Omar al-Bashir, whose three-decade reign was toppled on Thursday by top commanders after four months of nationwide demonstrations.

An air strike killed the deputy leader of the Islamic State group in Somalia s semi-autonomous Puntland region, alongside another militant, a local security official said on Sunday. A witness said a 4x4 vehicle was hit by several missiles 3 km (2 miles) outside the village of Xiriiro in the Qandala hills at 1 p.m. (1000 GMT) on Sunday.

Fighting in Tripoli has killed 121 people and wounded 561 since commander Khalifa Haftar launched an offensive earlier this month to take the Libyan capital, the World Health Organization said Sunday. WHO s Libya account said on Twitter the organisation was sending medical supplies and more staff to Tripoli, while denouncing "repeated attacks on health care workers, vehicles" during fighting which began on April 4.

Egypt s Ministry of the Interior said in a statement on Thursday that police forces have killed six terrorists from the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated group Hasm in Qalioubiya governorate, north of Cairo. The terrorists were killed in a shootout with security forces as police raided a building on a farm in Qalioubiya. The ministry said the raid was carried out based on intelligence received by the National Security Agency that the terrorists where planning attacks upon calls from the media platforms of the terrorist-designated Muslim Brotherhood organisation, which aim to weaken stabilty and security in the country.

German police on Wednesday raided offices belonging to Islamic organisations suspected of financing the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which is on the European Union s terrorism blacklist, the interior ministry said. The ministry said the main targets of the raids were WorldWide Resistance-Help and Ansaar International which are believed to have collected funds for Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, under the guise of humanitarian aid.

Casualties from the battle for Tripoli mounted on Tuesday as a group loyal to Islamic State killed three people in Libya s remote centre showing how militants may exploit renewed chaos. The United Nations health body said local facilities had reported 47 people killed and 181 wounded in recent days as eastern forces seek to take Libya s coastal capital from an internationally-recognised government.

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.