Ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi and 24 others, including prominent Islamists and secular figures, will go on trial May 23 for insulting the judiciary, a court official said Wednesday.

The trial will be the fifth for Morsi, who faces the death sentence if convicted in the other cases for espionage and violence.

Egypt's forensic authority spokesman Hisham Abdel Hamid said Tuesday he had been sacked after an interview in which he said a protester died of birdshot wounds because she was too thin.

An officer has been referred to trial for allegedly shooting dead activist Shaima al-Sabbagh when riot police fired tear gas and birdshot to disperse a peaceful rally in January.

A roadside bomb killed two soldiers and wounded six others on Tuesday as it struck a passing armoured vehicle in the restive Sinai peninsula, Egyptian military and medical officials said.

A military official said the explosion took place as army forces patrolled an area near the village of el-Kharouba, close to the Gaza Strip in the north.

Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan Monday agreed a preliminary deal on a controversial dam project that Cairo feared would reduce its share of vital waters from the Nile.

The leaders of Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan all gathered in Khartoum to sign the agreement of principles on Ethiopia's Grand Renaissance Dam project.

A shark attack on Sunday killed a 52-year-old German tourist in an Egyptian Red Sea resort, in the first such incident in five years, police said.

The attack in which the shark sheared off the German's leg took place off Al-Qusair.

More than 45,000 Egyptians have fled Libya since jihadists published a video last month showing the beheading of Coptic Christians, most of them Egyptian, an official and state media said Friday.

Hundreds of thousands of Egyptians work in the restive country to the west and send money home to support their families, but their exact number is uncertain because many enter illegally.

Egypt arrested nine Palestinian fishermen off the coast of the Gaza Strip Friday, the fishing union said, amid tense relations between Cairo and Gaza's Islamist rulers Hamas.

"The Egyptian navy arrested nine fishermen while they were out fishing on the line between Gaza and Egypt," union official Nizar Ayesh told AFP.

An Egyptian court adjourned until Wednesday the retrial of three Al-Jazeera journalists accused of supporting the banned Muslim Brotherhood movement, after listening to expert witnesses.

Australian journalist Peter Greste, who was deported to his home country in February, is being tried in absentia.

An Egyptian court Thursday acquitted an interior minister of ousted president Hosni Mubarak of corruption charges, in the last in a string of cases he faced, his lawyer and state media said.

Habib al-Adly was cleared of illegally accumulating around 181 million Egyptian pounds ($25 million/23 million euros) and will be released, his lawyer Mohammed el-Gendy said.

An Israeli partner in the Tamar gas field announced Wednesday a deal to sell natural gas to an Egyptian company, as Cairo said it knew nothing of the deal, which it must approve.

Delek said the partners would supply Dolphinus Holdings with at least five billion cubic meters (177 billion cubic feet) of gas over three years in a deal estimated at an overall $1.2 billion (962 million euros).