An Egyptian police raid on an apartment in Cairo killed nine wanted men including senior Muslim Brotherhood leader Nasser al-Houfi on Wednesday, security officials and the Brotherhood said.

The raid the 6th of October district came as security forces were engaged in fierce fighting with Islamic State group jihadists in the Sinai Peninsula, in which at least 70 soldiers and civilians, have been killed.

Gunmen shot dead an Egyptian policeman outside a museum and three suspected militants were killed in a car explosion in a suburb of the Egyptian capital on Tuesday, police said.

The attack and blast came a day after the top prosecutor was killed in a car bombing in Cairo, prompting President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to pledge tough new laws to fight Islamist militants.

Egypt's state prosecutor was killed in a powerful bombing that hit his convoy in Cairo on Monday following jihadist calls for attacks on the judiciary to avenge a crackdown on Islamists.

The health ministry and senior officials including Justice Minister Ahmed al-Zind told AFP that Hisham Barakat had died in hospital several hours after the morning bombing in the upscale district of Heliopolis in east Cairo.

Egypt faces treacherous weather conditions as a sandstorm blanketed the north of the country and a 5.2 earthquake centered in the Sinai peninsula shook buildings more than 200 miles away in the capital, Cairo.

Airports near Alexandria and Marsa Matrouh, along the Mediterranean coast, closed and diverted flights to Cairo due to poor visibility from the day's sandstorm, Civil Aviation Minister Hossam Kamel said.

The German authorities should carry out an investigation into the two-day detention of Al-Jazeera journalist Ahmed Mansour, a global rights watchdog said Wednesday.

Human Rights Watch called on German lawmakers to put pressure on their government to get answers.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius on Saturday urged the resumption of Middle East peace talks, while warning that continued Israeli settlement building in the occupied West Bank damaged chances of a final deal. 

"What's important is that negotiations restart," Fabius told reporters during a visit to Cairo, where he held what he said were intensive talks with Egyptian officials on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Qatar expressed "deep concern" on Wednesday over a death sentence handed down by an Egyptian court against ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi and called for his release.

The United States has branded the sentencing of Egypt's first democratically elected president as politically motivated.

Lebanon has likely plunged in an open-ended cabinet crisis after consultations on the controversial issue of the appointment of high-ranking security and military officials failed to produce results.

Speaker Nabih Berri did not confirm to his visitors whether Prime Minister Tammam Salam would be able to call for a cabinet session this month or if the paralysis would last longer than the holy month of Ramadan which starts on Thursday.

An Egyptian court has sentenced 23 people to 14 years in prison for the killings by an angry mob of four Shiite men outside Cairo two years ago.

The four dead were among Shiites attacked in June 2013 by a mob of several hundred residents as they gathered at a house in the town of Abu Musallam.

An Egyptian court Saturday ordered the retrial of 16 people sentenced to death or long prison terms for their involvement in the deaths of 25 policemen in the restive Sinai peninsula.

They were among 35 people accused of involvement in a rocket-propelled grenade attack on a police bus in August 2013 that was travelling to Rafah, on the border with the Gaza Strip.