Egyptian security forces freed on Tuesday a police officer who was kidnapped during the deadly shootout earlier this month between policemen and terrorists in Egypt’s Western Desert, state-owned news agency MENA reported. A security source told MENA that police officer Mohamed El-Hayes was freed in a morning operation.

Egypt’s air force on Monday carried out airstrikes on the hiding places of militants responsible for the El-Wahat El-Baheria attack that left at least 16 policemen dead, according to a statement released by the army’s official spokesperson. According to the statement, the airstrikes targeted the position of the militants in a mountainous area to the west of the Fayoum governorate close to El-Wahat road.

The US State Department published their annual international religious report on the conditions of religious freedom in nearly 200 countries worldwide. According to the report, religious minorities in Egypt still face extreme terrorist threats and sectarian violence. The report points out that the Egyptian government still refuses to recognize religions, namely Jehovah Witnesses, Mormons and the Baha’is despite the Egyptian constitution of 2014, which states Egyptians are free to follow and exercise any religion.

The bodies of 36 people shot dead have been found near Benghazi, in eastern Libya, a security official said Sunday. The bodies, found in Al-Abyar, around 70 kilometres (45 miles) east of Benghazi, were of suspected Islamist militants including 19 foreigners, the official said.

Somali security forces have ended a night-long siege by at a Mogadishu hotel by five extremist attackers who stormed the building after a suicide car bomber detonated an explosives-laden vehicle at the entrance gate on Saturday afternoon. The attack killed 23 people.

Heavy clashes between Syria s army and the Islamic State group in Deir Ezzor city have killed at least 73 fighters in the last 24 hours, a monitor said Sunday. Syria s army controls most of Deir Ezzor city, capital of Deir Ezzor province in the country s east, and made further advances after responding to an IS group attack that began Saturday, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.

The Academy of the Arabic Language in Cairo has proposed a new law to the Egyptian Parliament which would fine and potentially jail journalists if they use colloquial language instead of formal Arabic in their published materials. The academy, which was established in 1934 in Zamalek for the preservation and modernization of the Arabic language, conducts linguistic research and regularly publishes updated Arabic dictionaries.

Six alleged terrorists were killed in a military operation in North Sinai on Monday amid the ongoing military operations fighting terrorism, Military Spokesperson Tamer Al-Refaie said in a statement. In a statement, Al-Refaie said that the second field army forces received intelligence information that there is a terror den. Forces destroyed the den and preserved a huge amount of arms and ammunition.

Russia cast a veto at the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday preventing the renewal of the mandate for a mission that investigates the use of chemical weapons in Syria. The investigation by the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) - known as the Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) - was unanimously created by the 15-member U.N. Security Council in 2015 and renewed in 2016 for another year. Its mandate is due to expire in mid-November.

A preliminary study carried out on the Coptic tombstone recently discovered in Luxor reveals that it belonged to a little girl named "Takla," who died at the age of ten sometime between the 7th and 10th centuries AD. The study also found that the Coptic inscription found above the carved cross is an abbreviation for the name of "Jesus," Mostafa Waziri, Secretary-General of Egypt s Supreme Council of Antiquities, told Ahram Online.

The Ministry of Antiquities announced discovering a Coptic tombstone on Sunday at the eastern side of the Avenue of Sphinxes beneath Al-Mathan bridge in Luxor. The discovery saw the light through an excavation work on the hands of an Egyptian archaeological mission. The announcement was declared by Dr. Mostafa Waziri, the Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in a press release published at the Ministry of Antiquities official Facebook page.

Armed Forces spokesperson Tamer al-Refaei puboished a video on his Facebook page of Egypt’s air force thwarting an attempt by smugglers to infiltrate the western border. The armed forces said in a statement on Monday that the operation resulted in the destruction of eight four-wheel vehicles loaded with weapons, ammunition and highly explosive materials. They added that smugglers in the vehicles were killed.

Pro-government media is reporting that Syrian troops have taken up a position allowing them to fire down on a supply route between an Islamic State-held town on the Iraqi border and a nearby desert outpost. Pro-government forces are closing in on the frontier town of Boukamal, the last major IS stronghold in the country after the militants were driven from their de facto capital in the northern city of Raqqa as well as the eastern town of Mayadeen.

A wave of unprecedented violent attacks against police and army forces have surfaced in Egypt, spurring questions about Egypt s political scene, the nature of these attacks and terrorist affiliations. These incidences spiked in the wake of the June 30th uprisings, that led to the overthrow of Islamist Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi. Reports that the IS affiliated group of Sinai Province , attacked another police or army checkpoint in North Sinai have become routine to Egyptians. Attacks that take place in Cairo, near the outskirts or even inside the Delta governorates, have become synonymous with two militant groups suspected to be MB affiliated, Lewaa El Thawra and Hasm .

Giza Criminal Court convicted 26 defendants on Sunday, four of whom have been tried in absentia, on terrorism charges in the case known in the media as the ‘Giza Terrorist Cell’ case. The court sentenced 11 defendants to death, 14 others to lifetime imprisonment, and a minor to 10 years in prison.

German federal prosecutors have opened up more than 900 terrorism-related cases so far this year, including 800 related to radical Islamists, according to report published in the German language “Welt am Sonntag” on Sunday. The number of terrorism cases has jumped nearly four-fold compared to last year, when federal prosecutors opened about 250 proceedings. In 2013, there were about 80 terrorism cases in the courts.

An Egyptian court has set November 11 as the date of the first trial hearing of a man charged with killing a Coptic priest and injuring another in Cairo last week, a judicial source told Ahram Online on Thursday. The prosecution charged forty-year-old Ahmed El-Sonbaty with premeditated murder in the killing of Arch Priest Samaan Shehataa, who hailed from Beni Suef Governorate in Upper Egypt.

With the rise of numerous unofficial Fatwas — rulings on a point of Islamic law given by a recognized authority — that are being issued from clerics who are affiliated with Egypt’s top Muslim authority Al-Azhar, a desire to censor these rulings has surfaced in Egypt’s political and media spheres. During a recent conference sponsored by Al-Azhar, the deputy head of the institution Abbas Showman said that it is necessary to guarantee that all Fatwas circulated in Egypt are being issued from the official entities of Al-Azhar.

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.