Mexico called on Egypt Monday to swiftly investigate why a group of tourists were mistakenly targeted in what witnesses described as an air strike that killed at least two Mexicans.

President Enrique Pena Nieto said 14 Mexicans were among those involved in Sunday's "grave incident" in the Western Desert.

A court in Egypt on Saturday ratified death sentences for 12 people convicted of planning attacks on behalf of the jihadist Islamic State group.

Six of those whose sentences were confirmed are in custody, while six were tried in absentia.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi Saturday accepted the resignation of the government after it was rocked by a corruption scandal, and tasked the oil minister with forming a new cabinet.

A senior official told Agence France Presse the resignation of premier Ibrahim Mahlab's administration aimed to "pump new blood" into the government after the arrest on Monday of agriculture minister Salah Helal on suspicion of taking bribes.

A car bombing killed an Egyptian woman and a child Friday in the North Sinai town of Rafah, where the military is engaged in a sweeping campaign against jihadists, the army said.

The military said that the bomb went off as troops combed the border town neighboring the Palestinian Gaza Strip, and there were no army casualties.

Canada, India, Singapore and Egypt are "seriously" interested in buying France's two Mistral warships, a senior official has said, after Paris scrapped a deal to sell the vessels to Russia over the Ukraine crisis.

Louis Gautier, an official who advises the prime minister on defense and security matters, also told lawmakers this week that the cost of abandoning the agreement with Russia would be at least 1.1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) if the government did not find another buyer, according to a summary of his comments obtained by AFP Friday.

Softly spoken schoolgirl Mariam Malak has become an unlikely symbol of the fight against corruption in Egypt after scoring the sum total of zero in her final exams.

The 19-year-old top student, a teacher's daughter in a small village in the poor southern province of Minya, dreams of becoming a doctor like her two brothers.

Egypt's army said Tuesday it had launched a "major military operation" against the Islamic State group in the Sinai Peninsula, killing 29 jihadists and leaving two soldiers dead.

"Units of the police and army launched Operation Right of the Martyr at dawn to eliminate terrorist elements in Rafah, Sheikh Zuweid and El-Arish in North Sinai," the army said in a statement.

An Egyptian court on Monday confirmed death sentences for nine people convicted of killing a bodyguard to a judge heading a trial against ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.

The court upheld the death sentences for the murder of Sergeant Abdallah Metwally, gunned down in February 2014 in the city of Mansoura north of Cairo.

The Egyptian navy has seized three fishing boats in the Mediterranean carrying 228 migrants and arrested 17 crew members, the military said on Sunday.

"Naval forces, as part of their mission to secure the Mediterranean coast, spotted three suspicious fishing boats off the coast of Alexandria," the military said on its Facebook page.

Egypt's prosecution referred at least 38 alleged Islamists, including an influential exiled cleric, to military trial Saturday, accusing them of setting up militant cells that killed a police officer.

The prosecution said 35 people have been arrested, and accused leaders of the ousted Muslim Brotherhood of inciting them to carry out violent attacks.