Incursions by jihadist insurgents into western Niger from neighbouring Mali have caused more than 16,000 people to flee their homes since the start of the year, the UN said Wednesday. "Growing insecurity since January has caused the number of displaced people to leap," the UN s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

The General Prosecution ordered the referral of 28 defendants to the State Security Criminal Court over charges of forming an illegal group with the aim of “endangering societal peace and national unity, as well as inciting people to protest.” The group in question is called the Egyptian Council for Change, a non-governmental pressure body established outside Egypt by a Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated politician, Hossam Moghazy, after the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.

Dozens of peace protesters arrived in Kabul on Monday after walking hundreds of kilometers across war-battered Afghanistan, as the Taliban ended an unprecedented ceasefire and resumed attacks in parts of the country. Exhausted after their 700-kilometre (430-mile) trek, most of it during the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the marchers walked double file through the Afghan capital shouting “We want peace!” and “Stop fighting!”

An Italian delegation arrived in Cairo on Sunday, bringing together important church figures, pilgrims, journalists and TV hosts to visit the trail of the Holy Family, which was blessed by Pope Francis during his visit to Egypt last year. One of the organizers of the visit, Enjy Lahzy, said that the delegation will visit several stops from the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt, as well as the Faculty of Humanitarian and Theological Sciences in Maadi, which is affiliated to the Catholic Church. They will also visit some ecclesiastical (related to Church) and public figures, in cooperation with the Egyptian Tourism Ministry and Unitalsi, affiliated with the Italian church.

Ramadan is the holy month of prayer and religious obligations to Muslims. But in Egypt, it is also the month of family gatherings, shimmering lanterns, cheerful decorations and yummy oriented desserts. However, to Egyptians abroad, Ramadan tends to be different for each of them; while some find it lonesome, others enjoy the solitude. Egypt Independent spoke to several Egyptian expats around of the world on what Ramadan is like abroad, and whether they would rather spend it back home. “Ramadan simply means Egypt. Not having friends and family makes it tasteless, kind of like a restricted diet,” Mahmoud Gomaa, a 35-year-old living Singapore , tells Egypt Independent.

The Catholic Church announced that an Italian delegation of 50 tourists will visit Egypt on 17 June to follow in the footsteps of the Holy Family, after the country was recognized by Pope Francis as a pilgrimage site for Christians all over the world, similar to the Holy Land in Palestine. The delegation, headed by the Bishop of the Italian city of Viterbo will visit five blessed spots of the Holy Family journey program until 21 June 2018. The visit is considered the second of its kind as last February an Italian media group previously visited the path in Egypt.

The Syrian army has reinforced its anti-aircraft defences near the frontier with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, a commander in the regional alliance that backs President Bashar al-Assad said on Tuesday. Additional defences are set to be deployed in the coming days, the commander told Reuters. The stationing of the Russian-made Pantsir S1 weapon aims "to renew the air defence system against Israel in the first degree", added the commander, a non-Syrian who spoke on condition of anonymity.

At least 15 pro-Islamic State militants were killed when Philippine troops launched air and ground assaults against a rebel bomb factory on Sunday, a military commander said. Air strikes and artillery pounded an area in the Liguasan marsh in Maguindanao, where the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) group had been making improvised explosive devices, said Brigadier General Cirilito Sobejana.

A suicide bomber killed 12 people and wounded more than 30 on Monday at the entrance to Afghanistans rural development ministry in the west of the capital, a health ministry spokesman said.

At least 16 people were killed and dozens injured after an arms depot exploded in the Sadr City district of the Iraqi capital late Wednesday, security and medical sources said. "An arms depot exploded... The security forces have opened an inquiry to determine the cause," Baghdad s security operations command said in a statement.

The Syrian government re-opened the highway between the cities of Homs and Hama on Wednesday a month after its forces retook a rebel-held pocket that had straddled the road that was closed for almost seven years. Motorists waved Syrian flags as they drove down the highway whose re-opening marked a victory for President Bashar al-Assad, who in recent months has taken control of all rebel-held pockets around the capital Damascus as well as the enclave along the highway which had been under siege for years.

Egypt condemned on Tuesday the "heinous" the terrorist attack in Kabul which left 14 dead, statement by Egypt s Foreign Ministry read. "Egypt strongly condemns the attack carried out by the terrorist organization Daesh on the Grand Council of Muslim Clerics in the Afghan capital," the statement read.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that a bomb blast in northern Syria targeted a military vehicle on Monday on the road from Ain Issa to a military base where some of the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State are located. The blast killed at least one person and injured others of unknown nationality, the Britain-based war monitor reported, in an area controlled by the coalition-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias.

Berlin police said there was no sign that a "rampaging" man with a knife whom they shot and wounded Sunday at the city s main cathedral had had a "terrorist motive". "Based on what we know so far, we have no information that the suspect in any way had a terrorist or Islamist motive," a police spokesman said.

As turmoil spreads through the Middle East, American Jews and Muslims have been forming alliances to build trust and seek solidarity in more ambitious ways than in the past, a sharp contrast to the violence engulfing their homelands this week. Muslims and Jews have dispatched members into mosques and synagogues to learn about each other’s faiths, made a joint trip to tour civil rights sites in the South and formed partnerships involving CEOs of major corporations. Leaders of the groups said the challenging world events have provided impetus for the outreach efforts, including violence in Gaza, the Trump administration’s moving of the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, the travel ban from mostly Muslim countries and deepening concern about hate crimes.

Around a third of Germans would not accept a Muslim into their family, and a fifth would not accept a Jew as a family member, a study has found. The results of the report by the US-based Pew Research Center, released on Tuesday, have come amid heightened anxiety about Islam and anti-Semitism in Germany. What the study found 19 percent of Germans polled responded negatively to the question: “Would you be willing to accept a Jew as a family member?”

Police have found the dead body of a fugitive member of the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist group while pursuing terrorist suspects in a desert area near the Wahat road in Giza governorate, the Egyptian Ministry of Interior said in a statement on Monday. The police conducted the raid to apprehend suspects from the Brotherhood s armed wing who were meeting in the area according to intelligence obtained by the National Security Agency, and after obtaining a warrant from the prosecution.

Many years ago a young Jewish leader asked his followers a question which was all but astounding. He had been working with them quite assiduously. During their work together he was constantly asking them what his contemporaries were saying about him. But one day he pressed the question closer home. It is all very well to say what other people think of me, but what do you think? Who do you say that I am?
This question has gone echoing down the centuries ever since the young Jewish prophet sounded its first note.1 Many have attempted to answer this question by attributing total divinity to Jesus with little concern for his humanity.

Due to the milieu in which I work, I have been informed that the Copts of Egypt as a people have been nominated by a qualified nominator in the United States for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize. This is a peculiar and unique nomination, as this is the first time a group of people have been nominated for the award. Now, I acknowledge that the nomination may be viewed as controversial and unmerited by some, and there is a chance the nomination will not amount to a prize. However, we should look at this nomination as an acknowledgment of the pain, persecution, and ultimately centuries-long perseverance of a people symbolic of all those who have similarly suffered and persevered.