Egypt's Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadros II attempted on Monday to reassure Egyptians after the recent attacks on Copts in North Sinai, stressing that the Coptic families that have fled the governorate out of fear of terrorist violence will return to the city "when the time is right." At the start of this month, the Coptic Orthodox Church announced that 143 Christian families had fled North Sinai to Ismailiya after a spate of killings of Christians by Islamist militants in the governorate.

Islamic State's branch in the Sinai Peninsula posted a video on Tuesday depicting the beheading of two men the militant Islamist group said it had found guilty of practicing witchcraft and sorcery. The video, posted on a Telegram channel often used by IS, showed the group forming a religious police unit known as the Hasbah in northern Sinai, where it has waged an insurgency for years. The rugged, thinly populated peninsula borders Israel, Gaza and the Suez Canal.

Islamic State-affiliate Province of Sinai released a promotional video on Tuesday showing members of the organization carrying out what it alleges to be Hisba, or religious policing. The group claimed the footage is from locations in North Sinai, which it did not identify. Hisba is defined by religious scholars as the practice of commanding virtue and forbidding vice, professor of Islamic law professor at Al-Azhar University Ahmed Kareema told the state-owned Al-Ahram newspaper. He added that Hisba should be conducted by a select few who must be efficient, fair, knowledgeable and capable, describing it as a type of guardianship falling to those who have been entrusted with religious matters.

Five militants and two Egyptian soldiers were killed on Wednesday in an exchange of gunfire following a failed attack on a military checkpoint in the restive North Sinai, Egypt s army said in a statement. The shootout took place after a militant wearing an explosive belt attempted to storm the checkpoint before he was killed by security forces, military spokesman Tamer El-Rifaei said in the statement.

After breaking an Islamic State (IS) militant group blockade, Syria s army is seeking to encircle the remaining jihadist-held parts of Deir Ezzor city, a military source said Wednesday. The city is the capital of oil-rich eastern Deir Ezzor province, regarded as a strategic prize by both Russian-backed Syrian troops and US-backed fighters.

A Hamas delegation arrived in Cairo earlier this week to resume talks which started in February regarding the the situation in the Gaza Strip and bilateral relations with Egypt. The delegation is led by the head of the political bureau of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, in his first visit to Cairo since his election as the head of the group s political bureau in May.

The Bangladeshi prime minister was traveling Tuesday to struggling refugee camps that have absorbed hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fleeing violence in Myanmar in recent weeks — a crisis she said left her speechless. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina lambasted Myanmar for “atrocities” that she said had reached a level beyond description.

An attack by militants on a police convoy near Arish city in North Sinai on Monday has killed a number of policemen, the interior ministry has said, while anonymous sources told Al-Ahram Arabic s local correspondent, Hanaa El-Tabarani, that the number of dead has reached 18, with five injured. According to anonymous security sources quoted by Al-Ahram, militants remotely detonated an IED that destroyed three armoured security vehicles and a vehicle jamming system in a convoy 17km away from Arish.

Minya and Abu Qirqas Archeparchy reopened on Sunday Anba Paula church in Kedwan village and St.Mary church in Ezzbet al-Furn in Minya governorate, after numerous Copts complained of preventing them from praying in the two churches. His Grace Bishop Makarios, General Bishop of Minya and Abu Qirqas, praised President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s efforts to reopen the two churches, asserting that both Muslims and Copts live harmoniously in both villages.

Ten militants were killed and nine policemen were injured on Sunday in a shootout in central Cairo s Agouza district as police were executing a raid, according to a statement by the Ministry of Interior. Security forces had received information that a number of militants who escaped the restive North Sinai were hiding out in two apartments in Agouza and were planning a number of attacks in central governorates.

Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, Tawadros II, inaugurated the new Al-Malak Michael Monastery for nuns on Saturday in Melbourne city, during his visit to Australia which kicked off on August 30th. After the inauguration Pope Tawadros II recited a prayer of thanks and opened a new library at the Monastery of St. Anthony, for the the abbot of the White Monastery in Egypt, under the name Saint Shenoute, before inviting the Divine Liturgy inside the monastery.

Pope Francis will use his first full day in Colombia to send a message of unity, planting a tree of peace and saying a Mass to preach reconciliation in a nation bitterly divided after five decades of war. Francis received a tumultuous welcome on Wednesday afternoon. Screaming crowds mobbed the popemobile carrying the leader of the world s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics as it made its way slowly from the airport to the Vatican Embassy in central Bogota. Faithful threw flowers and held up children to be kissed.

The U.S. military killed three members of Islamist militant group al Shabaab in an airstrike in Somalia conducted with government forces, the U.S. Africa Command said on Wednesday. Tuesday s strike took place in Bay region, some 75 km west of the capital, Mogadishu, and also involved help from peacekeepers from the African Union Mission in Somalia.

The share of Americans who identify as white and Christian has dropped below 50 percent, a transformation fueled by immigration and by growing numbers of people who reject organized religion altogether, according to a new survey released Wednesday. Christians overall remain a large majority in the US, at nearly 70 percent of Americans. However, white Christians, once predominant in the country’s religious life, now comprise only 43 percent of the population, according to the Public Religion Research Institute, or PRRI, a polling organization based in Washington. Four decades ago, about eight in 10 Americans were white Christians.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday appealed to Myanmar s authorities to put an end to the violence in Rakhine state and take steps to provide Muslim Rohingyas there with "a normal life." Nearly 125,000 mostly Rohingya refugees have crossed the border to Bangladesh in recent weeks, fleeing a security sweep by Myanmar forces who have been torching villages in response to attacks by Rohingya militants. "The grievances and unresolved plight of the Rohingya have festered for far too long and are becoming an undeniable factor in regional destabilization," Guterres told reporters.

Syria s army faced fierce resistance from the Islamic State (IS) militant group Tuesday as it battles to break an Islamist militant siege on the government enclave of Deir Ezzor, a local journalist and monitor said. The Islamist militant group has already lost more than half of its nearby bastion of Raqa to attacking US-backed forces, and the loss of Deir Ezzor city and the surrounding oil-rich province would leave it with only a handful of isolated outposts.

Fighters from a US-backed coalition battling the Islamic State group in Syria walk among heavily damaged buildings in Raqa s Old City as snipers on upper floors monitor The smell of decay rises from bodies of IS militant killed in the battle for the key district as Syrian Democratic Forces field commander Ardlan Hasake patrols in an "We pushed Daesh out of the whole of Raqa s Old City. It was their strategic centre and their main base for foreign fighters," he says, using an Arabic acronym for IS group.

Fierce clashes between the Islamic State group and pro-regime forces in central Syria have left over 150 fighters dead in 24 hours, mostly jihadists, a monitor said Sunday. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 120 IS fighters "were killed in clashes in and around the town of Uqayribat in the eastern Hama countryside... along with at least 35 regime troops and loyalist militiamen."

More than 10 soldiers died on Sunday and several others were wounded when Al-Qaeda-aligned Shabaab militants stormed a base in southern Somalia, security sources said. The militants drove a truck loaded with explosives to the main entrance of the base in Bulogadud, about 70 kilometres (40 miles) from the port town of Kismayo and then attacked the soldiers.

Twenty Christian families have requested political asylum in Australia, which is being considered at present. It will be a good thing to offer these families a chance at a new life, he underlined. Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church, Twadros II, stated that Egypt has been suffering from economic and education problems since the outbreak of the January 25 and June 30 revolutions.

Pope Francis travels to Colombia this week to encourage a fledgling peace process that ended half a century of war between a succession of governments and the guerrilla group FARC but has left the country deeply divided. Francis, making his 20th foreign trip as pontiff and his fifth to his native Latin America, will spend five days in the country, visiting the capital Bogota and the cities of Villavicencio, Medellin and Cartagena.