Every morning, Pakistani grandfather Haji Abdul Haq wakes up wondering whether his son has been beheaded. Not by the Taliban, al-Qaida or the Islamic State group, but by the Saudi Arabian government.

Haq's son is on death row in the ultraconservative kingdom, waiting for his name to be added to the growing roll of Pakistanis executed this year by the Saudis for heroin smuggling.

Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam's most prestigious center of learning, on Thursday urged Christians in the Arab world to stand firm in the face of jihadist violence and not flee into exile.

The call, made at a Cairo conference organized by Al-Azhar, came just days after Pope Francis pressed the world's Muslim leaders to condemn terrorism carried out in the name of Islam by groups such as the Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaida, and called for an end to the persecution of Christians in the Middle East.

Thirty-one defendants are to go on trial in Egypt later this month on charges related to the 2013 killings of four Shiites outside Cairo, a court statement said on Thursday.

The four, who included a cleric, were killed on June 23 last year when a hostile mob attacked a house where they had gathered in the village of Abu Mussalam in Giza province.

UAE authorities said Thursday they had arrested a woman for the "unprecedented" murder of an American teacher in a shopping center and a foiled plot to bomb a U.S. doctor's home.

Police said the suspect was a 38-year-old Emirati whom they have dubbed "The Reem Island Ghost" after the location of the mall where the attack by a suspect in a veil took place on Monday in the ladies toilets.

Sudan's foreign minister accused "foreign parties" of fueling fighting in Libya as he opened a meeting of neighboring countries Thursday aimed at ending more than three years of violence.

Libya has been gripped by lawlessness ever since the 2011 overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi and is awash with weapons left over from the NATO-backed uprising against his dictatorship. Rival governments and parliaments dispute power, with swathes of territory in the hands of powerful militia.

An Islamic State group advance spearheaded by a suicide bomber on a government-held enclave in eastern Syria killed at least 19 government troops and militia, a monitoring group said Thursday.

The overnight bombing struck a government position near Deir Ezzor military airport, a vital supply line for the besieged troops holding out in the eastern city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Tunisia's first parliament since the 2011 revolution on Thursday elected veteran politician Mohamed Ennaceur, 80, of anti-Islamist party Nidaa Tounes as house speaker.

Ennaceur, the sole candidate, won 174 votes from the 214 MPs in attendance.

Fadi has endured verbal abuse and even the threat of suicide bombers during 15 years at the wheel of Jerusalem's public buses, but like dozens of Palestinian drivers he has finally had enough.

The 35-year-old began his career in west Jerusalem at a far more dangerous time, during the second Palestinian intifada when dozens of suicide bombers were targeting Israeli public transport on a regular basis.

A major pipeline leak has caused oil to gush into the Arava desert in southern Israel, threatening a protected nature reserve, officials said Thursday.

The incident took place just north of the Red Sea resort city of Eilat and 500 meters (yards) from the border with Jordan.

A Frenchman who killed a young Israeli woman in a hit-and-run accident in Tel Aviv and immediately fled the country, sparking huge outrage, has been sentenced to five years in jail.

Eric Robic, who confessed to being behind the wheel at the time of the 2011 tragedy, was sentenced by a Paris court to five years behind bars while his passenger, Claude Khayat, was sentenced to 15 months late Wednesday.