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.

Egypt s Criminal Court has handed a final death sentence to a man convicted of the October 2017 killing of a Coptic priest in a northeastern suburb of Cairo. The court s verdict comes two months after it convicted 19-year-old Ahmed El-Sonbaty and issued a preliminary death sentence.

Another 143 Turkish soldiers were wounded in the operation dubbed "Olive Branch" which began on January 20 against the Syrian Kurdish People s Protection Units (YPG) militia in the western region of Afrin, a statement said. While the United States has given armed support to the YPG against the Islamic State group in Syria, Turkey says the militia is a "terrorist" offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Egypt s presidential spokesman Bassam Rady affirmed in press statements on Sunday that the current "Sinai 2018" comprehensive military operation is a more sophistocated and extensive successor to a previous series of operations dubbed "Martyrs Right," the first phase of which was launched in 2015 as part of Egypt s wider war on terror. The current military operation involves all branches of Egyptian armed land, naval and air forces, as well as the police and border guards.

The UN s top human rights official on Saturday said 230 civilians were killed in the past week by a government offensive backed by Russian airstrikes, warning the attacks may constitute war crimes. “The past week has been one of the bloodiest periods of the entire conflict, with wave after wave of deadly airstrikes leading to civilian casualties in areas of Eastern Ghouta and Idlib,” said Zeid Ra ad al-Hussein, the UN high commissioner for human rights.

The US State Department has recently placed Hasm (Decisiveness) and Lewaa Al-Thawra (Revolution Brigade) on its list of terrorist organisations. The two groups, which Egypt has has said are affiliated to the banned Muslim Brotherhood, were branded as terrorists on the UK s list in December 2016.

Syria s state media say the U.S.-led coalition has bombed government-backed troops in eastern Syria, citing reports of dozens killed and wounded. The official state news agency SANA reported on Thursday that the overnight attack hit tribal fighters in Khusham, a town in the oil-rich Deir el-Zour province.

US authorities said Tuesday they had arrested a longtime Saudi resident of Oklahoma who had trained with Al-Qaeda and sought flying lessons. The Department of Justice said Naif Abdulaziz Alfallaj, 34, applied in 2000 to attend the same Al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, called al-Farouq, where several of the September 11 hijackers had trained.

Renewed government strikes killed 32 civilians on Wednesday in a rebel-held enclave near Damascus, where overwhelmed medics were still treating survivors of the Syrian conflict s bloodiest day in months. The district of Eastern Ghouta, controlled by rebel factions including Islamists, suffered some of its worst bloodshed in years on Tuesday, when 80 civilians were killed.

Yemeni Nobel Prize winner Tawakkol Karman was suspended from an Islamist party allied with President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi after she accused the Saudi-led coalition that backs him in the country s civil war of acting as occupiers. Karman won the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize for her role in Arab Spring protests that ousted authoritarian President Ali Abdullah. More recently she has ramped up public criticism of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, accusing them of backing a campaign to divide Yemen by supporting southern separatists against the internationally recognised government.

Egypt s high military appeals court upheld on Tuesday death sentences handed to two defendants over the August 2013 murder of two police personnel in North Sinai. A first-degree military court originally sentenced the pair to death in 2015 for their involvement in the militant attack on Al-Gora checkpoint in the North Sinai city of Al-Arish, and for possessing illegal firearms.

Egyptian army spokesman Tamer El-Refa i on Sunday dismissed a New York Times report alleging Egyptian approval of Israeli airstrikes against terrorist targets in North Sinai over the past two years. "The Egyptian Army and police are fighting terrorism in North Sinai on their own and without anybody s help," the spokesman said in the statement.

The Second Field Army’s law enforcement forces in North Sinai, in cooperation with the Air Force, killed a high-ranking militant and arrested six suspected terrorists Armed Forces’ spokesperson Tamer al-Refaei said on Monday. Authorities discovered and destroyed two four-wheeled vehicles, six motorbikes as well as a storehouse containing motorbike spare parts and 51 explosive devices, he said in a statement.

Egypt s armed forces thwarted over the past week 20 different attempts to smuggle goods and drugs, as well as irregular migration attempts, across Egyptian borders, the army spokesman said in a statement on Saturday. The Armed Forces have apprehended 20 suspects in several cases as well as 226 persons who attempted to migrate irregularly.

Syrian militants of Hay at Tahrir al-Sham shot down a Russian fighter jet in Idlib city in northwestern Syria on Saturday, according to the Russian Defence Ministry. The pilot of the aircraft, a Sukhoi Su-25, was killed when the militants tried to capture him. According to the statement by the Russian Ministry of Defence, “the pilot managed to report the ejection in the area controlled by the militants of Jabhat al-Nusra, but later he died fighting the terrorists.”

The Syrian government described on Thursday a Turkish offensive in Syria s Afrin region as an illegal "aggression" and said it would deal with it accordingly. "The Turkish military operation in northern Syria is a blatant aggression," said a foreign ministry statement circulated on state media. The unauthorised presence of foreign forces represents "occupation and will be dealt with on this basis", it said.

The US State Department designated two Egypt-based militant groups ‘Hasm’ and ‘Lewaa al-Thawra’ as terrorist groups, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in a statement on Wednesday, citing their links to the Muslim Brotherhood. “Some of the leaders of the violent splinter groups, Lewaa al-Thawra and Hasm, were previously associated with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood,” the State Department noted in a statement, adding that subsequently, the assets of Hasm and Lewaa al-Thawra will be blocked, and US nationals will be prohibited from dealing with them.

Clashes raged between Turkish-backed forces and Kurdish militia in Syria s Afrin region on Wednesday, as wounded civilians fled intense Turkish air strikes. Turkey and allied Syrian rebels have pressed on with Operation Olive Branch in the Kurdish-controlled Afrin enclave despite mounting international concern and reports of rising civilian casualties. An AFP correspondent in Afrin heard warplanes flying overhead, and Kurdish officials said rocket fire on the town wounded 12 civilians.

Rockets fired from northern Syria into a Turkish border town killed a teenage girl and wounded another person on Wednesday, Turkey s state-run news agency reported amid Ankara s intensifying offensive on a Syrian Kurdish-controlled enclave. It was the latest in a string of rocket attacks on the border towns of Reyhanli and Kilis since Jan. 20, when Turkey s military launched a cross-border operation to drive out the Syrian Kurdish militia from the northern enclave of Afrin. Ankara considers the Syrian Kurdish People s Protection Units, or YPG, an extension of the outlawed Kurdish rebels fighting an insurgency inside Turkey.