Jakarta's Christian governor will fight to cling on to his job at polls this week despite standing trial for blasphemy, in a saga that has fuelled concerns about religious intolerance in the Muslim-majority nation. Basuki Tjahaja Purnama will Wednesday face two prominent Muslim candidates in the race to lead the Indonesian capital, a megacity of 10 million, as local elections take place across the country.

A nonymous militants killed a 55 year-old civilian, Saleh Hamed, inside the North Sinai city of Al-Arish on Saturday evening as he attempted to stop the kidnapping of his son, who was taken by the militants following the shooting, state-run newspaper Akhbar Al-Youm reported.

Two rockets landed in Baghdad's highly fortified Green Zone on Saturday night following clashes at anti-government protests that left five dead, according to Iraqi security and hospital officials.

An "Islamic State" (IS)-affiliated terrorist group claimed responsibility for firing rockets on Thursday towards Israel's Red Sea resort of Eilat from Egypt's Sinai peninsula, an attack that Israel said caused no damage or casualties.

Experts in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) warned US President Donald Trump that declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation "may fuel extremism", a POLITICO report revealed on Thursday.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and US President Donald Trump agreed in a phone call overnight to act jointly against Islamic State in the Syrian towns of al-Bab and Raqqa, both controlled by the militants, Turkish presidency sources said on Wednesday.

Suspected Islamic State gunmen killed at least six Afghan employees of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Wednesday as they carried supplies in the north of the country to areas hit by deadly snow storms, government officials said.

Air strikes on Al-Qaeda's former affiliate in Syria on Tuesday killed 26 people in the country's northwest, most of them civilians, a monitoring group said.

At least 20 people were killed on Tuesday in a bomb blast outside the Supreme Court in the center of Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, government officials said, in what appeared to be the latest in a series of attacks on the judiciary.

Egyptian MP Tarek El-Khouly, a member of the Presidential Pardon Committee, said that he has received a “declaration of repentance” from a number of imprisoned members of the Muslim Brotherhood, which he will forward to the presidency. Speaking to Al-Ahram Arabic website, MP El-Khouly said that these messages from the Brotherhood prisoners were sent to him personally, since the pardon committee has already set criteria excluding those affiliated with the banned group from consideration for pardon.

The Council of Senior Scholars, the top body of Al-Azhar Institution, made a decision about the verbal divorce case on Sunday, confirming its validity if it meets the set conditions. In a statement, the council said this is what Muslims settled upon since the time of Prophet Mohamed.

Egyptian Christians can now take paid vacations from work to perform a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Naguib Gabriel – the lawyer who successfully challenged the constitutionality of an article in a 1978 law for civil servants that grants Muslims paid vacation to perform the Hajj – told Ahram Online on Sunday.

The Council of Senior Scholars, the top body of al-Azhar institution, convened in an emergency meeting on Sunday to discuss the case of verbal divorce potentially being eliminated. The meeting was headed by Grand Imam Ahmed al-Tayyeb.

Syrians fleeing the Islamic State (IS) militant group in the eastern city of Deir Ezzor are taking dangerous smuggling routes through mined territory to reach safety, but harsh conditions await near the Iraqi border.

Al-Qaeda is gaining ground in Yemen and could benefit from military actions like the deadly raid by elite US forces ordered by President Donald Trump, the International Crisis Group warned Thursday. "The Yemeni branch of Al-Qaeda is stronger than it has ever been," ICG said in a report documenting the spread of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

More than 1,100 German police searched 54 homes, business premises and mosques in Frankfurt and other towns in the western state of Hesse in the early hours of Wednesday and arrested a Tunisian man suspected of planning an attack, German authorities said.

Some families of those killed in the Sept. 11 attacks spoke out Tuesday against President Donald Trump's ban on travellers from seven majority-Muslim countries.

High-level security sources revealed that 39 suspects have been arrested and 10 terrorist cells destroyed in a crackdown across different areas in North Sinai. Joint police and army forces conducted crackdowns on outlaws and wanted suspects in Arish, Sheikh Zuweid and Rafah cities, the sources told Al-Masry Al-Youm.

Leading Sunni Muslim body Al-Azhar, Egypt and Jordan on Monday condemned an attack in which six people were killed during prayers at a mosque in the Canadian city of Quebec. Gunmen stormed the Islamic Cultural Center in Quebec on Sunday evening, killing six and wounding eight before police arrested two alleged assailants.

Egypt's Prime Minister Sherif Ismail issued on Monday a decision to form a committee to legalise the status of churches that were constructed without licenses, in accordance with the 2016 law regulating the construction and renovation of churches.

US President Donald Trump has declared his support for Christians "executed in large numbers" in the Middle East, two days after he issued an immigration order that barred citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the US.