Bulldozers push earth and dredgers spit mud round the clock at Egypt's Suez Canal in a race to quickly expand the strategic waterway for two-way traffic, a project trumpeted by President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to revive both the country's damaged economy and visions of nationalist glory.

The government's goal of more than doubling annual canal revenues to some $13 billion in less than a decade, however, appears overly ambitious. Although more vessels will be drawn to the canal because there will be almost no wait time, any major increase depends on something unlikely to happen soon, analysts and shippers say — a large jump in European demand fueling greater shipping from Asia.

The Arab League will consider setting up a defense unit to battle the spread of the Islamic State group at its annual summit later this month, an official said Tuesday.

Deputy chief Ahmed Ben Helli told reporters that the March 28-29 meeting in Egypt's Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh will discuss an Egyptian initiative to create a "unified Arab force".

Egypt's administrative court formally delayed Tuesday this month's parliamentary election, after the electoral commission announced it would not be held on time due to legal obstacles.

The constitutional court ruled Sunday that part of the electoral law was unconstitutional, prompting the electoral commission to begin preparing a new timetable for the vote, which had been due to start on March 21.

Eleven people were wounded, one critically, in a bomb explosion outside the Egyptian supreme court in Cairo on Monday, hospital officials said.

A police official and state media had said one man died but later retracted the information.

Three Israelis were on Monday charged with smuggling goods into the Gaza Strip knowing they would be used by Hamas to bolster its military infrastructure, officials said.

Micha Peretz, Yehoram Alon and another man whose name has not been released were indicted at Beersheba District Court for trade worth millions of dollars with a Palestinian merchant in Gaza, while fully aware he was transferring the materials to Hamas.

A bomb blast killed two people Sunday in Aswan, the first such attack in the Egyptian tourist town since a wave of violence following the 2013 ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, police said.

The explosion, caused by a device placed near a police station in the southern town, also wounded five people including a policeman, according to the same source.

Egypt's army said Sunday at least 172 militants were killed in February in joint police and military operations in the restive Sinai where security forces are battling an Islamist insurgency.

The militants were killed in a series of security operations in the peninsula after a deadly January 29 attack by jihadists left 30 people dead, mostly soldiers.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi held talks in Riyadh on Sunday, coinciding with a visit to Saudi Arabia by his Turkish counterpart who Cairo accuses of backing the banned Muslim Brotherhood.

Sisi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose relations have been strained since Sisi ousted his Islamist predecessor Mohamed Morsi in July 2013, did not meet in the oil-rich Gulf state.

Egypt's electoral commission said Sunday it was preparing a new timetable for parliamentary polls, delaying the March 21 vote after a court ruled parts of the election law unconstitutional.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ordered that the law be redrafted within a month and asked that "legal measures be undertaken to avoid delaying" the election, his office said.

An Egyptian court on Saturday declared Hamas a "terrorist" organisation, a judicial source said, weeks after the Palestinian Islamist movement's armed wing was given the same designation.

Since Egypt's military ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013, the authorities have accused Hamas of aiding jihadists who have waged a string of deadly attacks on security forces in the Sinai Peninsula.