The World Bank has agreed to grant Egypt a $500m loan to finance a mega-project delivering natural gas to homes across the country, Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb announced Tuesday.

President Barack Obama expressed support on Wednesday for Egyptian efforts in Cairo to broker a longer-term Gaza ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinians and said it was important to make sure that the current temporary 72-hour truce holds.

An Egyptian court sentenced on Thursday two people to life imprisonment and one to 20 years in prison over the sexual harassment case that took place in Tahrir Square on June 3, during the celebratios of the inauguration of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

The Egyptian foreign ministry stressed the need for violence and armed clashes to end in neighbouring Libya in a Thursday statement.

Egypt's foreign reserves rose to $16.736 billion at the end of July from $16.687 billion in June, the central bank said on Thursday.

For the second time in one week, Egypt's intelligence chief Mohamed Farid El-Tohamy met Wednesday with the Palestinian delegation in Cairo as part of the continued effort to push for a lasting ceasefire in Gaza Strip.

Militants attacked a police checkpoint near a Mediterranean resort area frequented by Egyptian holidaymakers, killing five policemen and losing four of their own in the ensuing gunbattle, the Interior Ministry said on Wednesday.

Concern spread in Menoufia governorate Tuesday after eight people suspected of being infected with the Ebola virus were put under medical observation after arriving from Sierra Leone, Equatorial Guinea and Guinea, Al-Shorouk newspaper reported Wednesday.

Eleven people were sentenced to death and 11 others to life and one defendant was acquitted on Wednesday in the case involving the murder of a senior Giza police officer last September.

Disgraced Egyptian businessman Ahmed Ezz has been required to pay 252 million EGP ($35.2 million) in fines to be released from prison, but so far he has only managed to pay 152 million EGP, Youm7 reported Wednesday.

Three "terrorists" were killed in a security crackdown in North Sinai on Tuesday, an army spokesperson said in a statement published on armed forces official page.

Business activity in Egypt shrank in July, a survey showed on Tuesday, in a sign the economy remains fragile after cuts to energy subsidies last month led to lower demand and higher prices.

An American UN peacekeeper soldier has been shot at by unidentified gunmen in Sheikh Zowayed in North Sinai.

A new 72-km (45-mile) canal alongside to be built alongside the existing the Suez Canal is expected to cost $4 billion, the chairman of the Suez Canal Authority said on Tuesday.

Egypt has no intention of intervening militarily in Libya and is merely keen to safeguard its borders, the country's foreign minister has said.

An Egyptian court referred on Monday a challenge to a verdict lifting a ban on an Islamist charity organisation to the State Commissioners’ Authority.

A military source said on Sunday that the donation of Younis al-Masry, the commander of the Air Force, to the “Long Live Egypt” fund was in his personal capacity as a citizen and not as a military personnel.

Last Thursday, during a press briefing in Washington, DC, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf accused Egypt of using military weapons "against their own people." Badr Abdel-Atti, spokesman for Egypt's Foreign Ministry, fired back, describing the comments as "sheer fantasy," noting that they "fall short and are completely ignorant of realities of matters in Egypt."

The Palestinian Ministry of Interior say that Israel violated a seven-hour humanitarian ceasefire after at least 30 were injured in the shelling of a house in a refugee camp on the western coast of Gaza.

Around 2500 Egyptians have been evacuated from conflict-torn Libya to Tunisia in order to be flown back to Egypt, the country's foreign minister said in a press conference during his visit to Tunisia.

ISRAEL contemptuously rejected ceasefire talks at the weekend and instead renewed its murderous assault on Gaza.