Two Canadians being held in Egypt have launched a hunger strike in protest at their incarceration without charge, a family member told Agence France Presse on Wednesday.

John Greyson is a Toronto filmmaker and university professor, and Tarek Loubani is an emergency room doctor from London, Ontario.

An Egyptian military court on Wednesday sentenced five Palestinian fishermen to one year each in jail for illegally entering Egyptian territorial waters, an army source told Agence France Presse.

The Palestinians were arrested when they crossed into Egyptian waters near the border town of Rafah, the source said, adding that the verdict was delivered by a military court in the Suez canal town of Ismailiya.

Gaza rulers Hamas and residents of the Palestinian territory fear Egypt's destruction of tunnels used to smuggle goods across the border is part of a plan to tighten a blockade of the Strip.

"The Egyptian army has destroyed 95 percent of the tunnels with the aim of setting up a security buffer zone," Sobhi Ridwan, head of the Palestinian municipality in the border town of Rafah, told AFP.

A French citizen died after being attacked by cellmates in a Cairo police station, where he had been detained for breaking a night-time curfew, security officials said on Tuesday.

Police arrested the man in the upmarket Zamalek neighborhood of the capital for violating the nightly curfew in force since the launch of a deadly crackdown on Islamist supporters of ousted president Mohammed Morsi on August 14.

An Egyptian court on Tuesday ordered the freezing of assets of senior leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood as part of a crackdown on Islamists by the army-backed authorities, a judicial source said.

Among those facing sanctions are Brotherhood general guide Mohammed Badie, his two deputies Khairat al-Shater and Rashad Bayoumi, as well as Salafist leader Hazem Abu Ismail and preacher Safwat Higazi.

Troops on Monday stormed a town in central Egypt held for the past month by hardline Islamists, arresting dozens accused of burning churches and terrorizing residents, officials said.

Soldiers and police entered Delga in Minya province just after dawn, firing tear gas and searching homes for suspects, a security official told Agence France Presse.

An Egyptian journalist on Sunday appeared before a military court, accused of spreading lies about the army's campaign against militants in the Sinai Peninsula.

The court in the Suez canal city of Ismailiya adjourned Ahmed Abu Deraa's hearing to September 18.

Egyptian naval forces opened fire at Palestinian fishermen off the Gaza Strip's southern coast and arrested two of them, the Islamist movement Hamas that rules the Palestinian enclave said.

Hamas "condemns the fire from Egyptian gunboats toward Palestinians within Palestinian waters, and the arrest of some of them," movement spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said in a statement.

After several years in the doldrums, demand for upscale Paris properties is starting to pick up with an unlikely helping hand from upheaval in the Middle East.

With the bloody Syrian civil war generating fears of instability across the region and Egypt teetering on the brink of chaos, well-heeled Arab investors are looking for boltholes and Paris is a perennial favorite destination for their funds, according to real estate professionals.

Egypt's interior ministry on Saturday issued a new warning to Islamist protesters, pledging to crack down if demonstrators block roads or obstruct traffic.

The ministry statement came a day after thousands of protesters rallied in Cairo against the military's July 3 overthrow of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi.