At least 11 people have been killed in a suicide bombing targeting security forces in the Afghan capital Kabul, Aljazeera reports. Waheed Majrooh, a spokesman for Afghanistan's Ministry of Public Health, told Al Jazeera at least 25 others were wounded in Thursday's attack, which happened in the Banaee area of Kabul's PD9 district. Najib Danish, deputy spokesman for the Afghan interior ministry, told Anadolu Agency that police officers and civilians were among the victims.

Turkey's religious affairs state agency, on Thursday, came under heavy criticism from the main opposition party after it reportedly said girls as young as nine could marry under Islamic law.

The Diyanet religious affairs directorate said Tuesday the minimum age for girls to marry was nine, while for boys it was 12, according to Turkish media including Hurriyet daily quoting the agency's official website.

The post, which took the form of an explanatory statement on Islamic law, has since been taken down, after a backlash from the opposition and women's rights groups.

An Egyptian court on Wednesday postponed its verdict in a case against rights lawyer and presidential hopeful Khaled Ali, judicial sources said, leaving uncertainty over whether he will be allowed to run in a forthcoming election.

President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi is widely expected to seek a second term in the presidential vote early this year, but has not yet announced his candidacy.

Ali said in November he intended to run against former military commander Sisi, who led the ousting of Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Mursi in 2013 before taking office a year later.

Saudi Arabia on Friday intercepted a ballistic missile over the kingdom’s south near the border with Yemen, state media reported, hours after Yemeni rebels said they had launched an attack. The Houthi rebels, locked in a war against Yemen’s Saudi-backed government, said they had fired a missile at the kingdom’s south-western province of Najran in a statement tweeted by their Al-Masirah television channel.

The Israel Institute of Technology (Technion) and the Israel Space Agency on Wednesday said Israel will launch a group of three nanosatellites into space in 2018. The launch, which is the first of its kind in Israel, will be carried out by Dutch company Innovative Solutions In Space, which specialises in launching nanosatellites on India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), as part of the Adelis-SAMSON Project.

Israel said on Wednesday it had cracked a Palestinian militant cell suspected of having been recruited and handled by Iranian intelligence officers who worked out of South Africa, but the suspects’ lawyer denied the charges.