The Hamas Islamist group ruling Gaza sought to ease tensions with Cairo on Wednesday by ordering Muslim preachers to mute their criticism of the Egyptian government over what some of the clerics have called its war on Islam.

A Cairo prosecutor ordered on Wednesday that Mohamed Saad al-Katatni, head of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, his deputy Essam al-Erian and senior member Mohamed al-Beltagy be referred to criminal court on charges of inciting the killing of protesters by the group’s Cairo headquarters in July.

Egyptian state prosecutors on Wednesday referred 12 leading Muslim Brotherhood members to criminal court on charges of "inciting violence and murder" in connection with June 30 clashes outside the group's Cairo headquarters in which ten people were killed.

A spokesperson for the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party in Ismailiya has been arrested, Al-Ahram Arabic news website reports.

Egyptian authorities will bar 55,000 unlicensed clerics from preaching in mosques in the latest move against sympathisers of deposed Islamist President Mohamed Morsi, the minister of religious endowments said on Tuesday.

The Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters have began forcing the roughly 15,000 Christian Copts of Dalga village in Egypt to pay a jizya tax as indicated in Koran 9:29, author and translator Raymond Ibrahim reported on Sunday.

Nine militias were killed and 10 were arrested in confrontations with security forces in North Sinai late on Monday, a security source told Aswat Masriya.

Beni Suef prosecutors on Tuesday ordered the detention of 10 Muslim Brotherhood members and 44 other defendants for 15 days pending investigations over charges of buring police stations in Beni Suef and the town of Semesta as well as attempting to storm a police station in Ihnasia, another neaby town.

The Salafi Nour Party on Tuesday said the 2012 Constitution should be reinstated if the Committee of 50's Constitution receives less votes than last year’s constitutional referendum.

The Muslim Brotherhood strongly rejected the initiative that was proposed by Hamza Zawba, spokesperson for the group’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), in which the group was to accept the road map and admit misruling the country under deposed President Mohamed Morsy.

The Ansar Beit al-Maqdes jihadist group has claimed responsibility for the attempted assassination of Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim last Thursday. The group published pictures of the bomb exploding and promised to publish a video of the operation.

Salafi-oriented Nour Party officially announced that it would take part in the 50-member committee amending the constitution.

An Al-Qaeda-inspired group based in Egypt's Sinai has said it was behind a bombing that targeted the interior minister in a failed assassination attempt, a statement on militant Islamist forums said.

Prosecutor general Hisham Barakat referred on Sunday 15 suspects, including Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie, to the Giza Criminal court in regards to violence on Al-Bahr Al-Aazam Street in July.

Egypt prosecutors extended the detentions of Salafist leader Hazem Salah Abu-Ismail and Muslim Brotherhood leaders Helmi El-Gazzar, Abdel-Moneim Abdel-Maqsoud, and former MP Mohamed El-Omda for another 15 days on Sunday, pending investigation into charges of inciting the murder of anti-Morsi protesters.

Al-Azhar, the highest religious institution in the Sunni Muslim world, said it had agreed with Egyptian churches to maintain Egypt’s identity as an Islamic state as part of ongoing amendments to the Egyptian constitution, according to a statement released late Saturday.

The Muslim Brotherhood and its allies have exerted huge efforts for two tumultuous months to overturn what they describe as a "military coup" in Egypt. Not only have they failed to achieve their goal, they have suffered a comprehensive security crackdown that seems to threaten their very existence.

Egypt’s hardline Salafist Nour Party recently decided to join the 50-member committee selected to propose amendments to the 2012 constitution, which was suspended after the removal Islamist president Mohamed Morsi on 3 July.

Egypt's newly formed constitutional committee marginalises the Islamic current, the Nour Party has complained.

Former President Mohamed Morsi was detained for four days pending interrogation on charges of insulting the judiciary. The detention decision was taken by the investigative body assigned to interrogate Morsi on Saturday morning, state-owned news agency MENA reports.

Senior Muslim Brotherhood leader Amr Darrag condemned an assassination attempt on Egyptian Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim on Thursday.