Former Egyptian president Mohamed Mursi, the first democratically elected head of state in Egypt's modern history, died Monday aged 67 after collapsing in a Cairo court while on trial on espionage charges, authorities said.

Since the Arab uprisings of 2011, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have used their considerable resources to promote authoritarian governments run by military strongmen in the region.

A court in Egypt has ordered the release of Al Jazeera journalist Mahmoud Hussein from prison after more than 880 days of detention.

A surge in deadly violence in the Gaza Strip and southern Israel petered out overnight with Palestinian officials reporting that Egypt had mediated a ceasefire on Monday ending the most serious spate of cross-border clashes for months.

Sudan considers oil and gas exploration blocks offered by Egypt in the Red Sea's Halayeb area as a direct intrusion into Sudanese territory, Saad al-Deen Hussein al-Bishri, minister of state at Khartoum's oil ministry, was cited as saying.

At least 25 people were killed and 50 injured when a locomotive smashed into a barrier at Cairo's main train station on Wednesday, causing an explosion and a fire, state television and witnesses said.

A locust outbreak in Sudan and Eritrea is spreading rapidly along both sides of the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization said on Friday, flagging a possible threat to crops and food security.

Two Palestinians including a Hamas policeman suffocated to death from gas in a cross-border tunnel under Gaza's frontier with Egypt, the enclave's interior ministry said Monday.

An Egyptian criminal court convicted 26 people on Thursday for 'joining an illegal group', namely for working with Al Jazeera and other television stations it deemed anti-government.

Egyptian security forces have killed 40 suspected militants in three separate incidents in North Sinai and Giza, the Interior Ministry said on Saturday, a day after a bombing on a Vietnamese tourist bus in Giza killed four people.

Al Jazeera Media Network’s staff in Doha and around the world renewed their call on Sunday for the release of their colleague Mahmoud Hussein and all detained journalists.

Egyptian security forces have killed 14 Islamist militants in an exchange of fire in the country's turbulent northern Sinai region, the interior ministry said Sunday.