Local media reported on Monday that Turkey's army has launched artillery strikes on positions of the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria after the jihadists recaptured an area near the Turkish border.

Turkish national Alparslan Celik, who earlier confessed to killed the pilot parachuting from the Russian Su-24 aircraft downed over Syria, was detained in Turkey on suspicion of fraud, local media reported Friday.

According to Reuters, Pakistan has decided to launch a paramilitary crackdown on Islamist militants in Punjab, the country's richest and most populous province, after an Easter Day bombing killed 70 people in the provincial capital Lahore, officials said Monday.

A jihadist Mohamed Abrini wanted for the terror attacks in Paris and believed to be the third Brussels airport attacker  (“man in the hat”) has been arrested in Belgium on Friday along with at least one other suspect, officials said.

A huge gas explosion has rocked the centre of Paris, destroying part of a residential building and sending smoke rising over the French capital.

Explosions and gunfire rang out Friday afternoon in Brussels. One person was wounded and detained in a major police operation in the northern Brussels borough of Schaerbeek, Belgian public broadcaster RTBF quoted the local mayor as saying.

Militants from the Islamic State terrorist group have reportedly abducted more than 300 cement workers near the city of Damascus in Syria. 

Huge bridge collapsed on Thursday onto pedestrians without warning in the Indian city of Kolkata. At least 21 people have been killed and some 150 are feared trapped after a flyover collapsed onto moving traffic, authorities said.

Two of the suicide bombers who carried out attacks in Brussels on Tuesday have been named as brothers Khalid and Brahim el-Bakraoui, Belgian nationals, TASS informs.

Azerbaijan and the Armenian-backed breakaway republic of Nagorno-Karabakh on Tuesday announced an immediate cease-fire after four days of intense fighting that had prompted fears of all-out war.

The Cypriot Foreign Ministry informs flight MS181 from Burj al-Arab in Egypt’s Alexandria to Cairo was hijacked on Tuesday morning by an Egyptian nationalist Seig Eldin Mustafa. The hijacker being arrested, all the passengers on the plane have been released.

Three explosions hit Brussels on Tuesday the first two at Zaventem airport and the third on a subway train near European Union headquarters.