Sixteen people were killed, all but three of them Egyptian policemen, in a collision between a police vehicle and a truck south of Cairo, authorities said on Saturday.

The accident happened on Friday night along a stretch of road in Beni Suef province about 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the Egyptian capital.

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen held talks in Egypt with Al-Azhar that broached the top Sunni Muslim body's "serious concerns" over her party's stance on Islam, it said.

National Front president Le Pen met late Thursday with Ahmed al-Tayeb, grand imam of Al-Azhar, at its Cairo headquarters during which he questioned her organisation's "hostile opinions towards Islam and Muslims", an Al-Azhar statement said.

Egypt reopened its Rafah border crossing with Gaza for two days from Tuesday, Palestinian border officials said, for the first time since March.

Maher Abu Sabha, director of border crossings in the Gaza Strip, said traffic was permitted into Gaza only, to allow the return of Palestinians stranded in Egypt.

Egypt summoned Pakistan's charge d'affaires to protest at Islamabad's criticism of the death sentence handed down to ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, the foreign ministry said on Tuesday.

Egypt denounces any "interference in its internal affairs which casts a shadow on relations between the two countries," the ministry said in a statement a day after summoning Mohamed Eijaz.

A four-day meeting of Libyan tribal leaders opened Monday in Egypt which is exploring ways to unite warring parties and bring peace to its oil-rich neighbor.

Those attending the conference at a Cairo hotel were members of tribes that back the internationally recognized government based in the eastern Libyan city of Tobruk.

Five African migrants drowned on Monday after jumping into the Mediterranean as Egyptian coastguards raided a boat heading towards Italy, security officials said.

Twenty-five people, including the owner and crew of the vessel, were arrested after the raid on the boat near the city of Kafr al-Sheikh.

An Egyptian court on Sunday sentenced to life in jail a policeman for sexually assaulting a 16-year-old mentally handicapped girl at a Cairo police station, a judicial official said.

The incident occurred in August 2014 at the capital's Imbaba police station where the girl had been detained for reasons that have not been made clear.

Thousands of Arabs marched in northern Israel on Saturday to protest against the death sentence issued in Egypt against ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.

Organisers said 5,000 people took part in the demonstration led by Sheikh Raed Salah, a firebrand preacher who heads the Islamist Movement's radical northern wing.

A number of Syrian opposition factions will gather in Cairo next month to form a new coalition as an alternative to an exiled West-backed alliance, officials said Saturday.

More than 200 figures from the armed and civilian opposition factions are to attend the June 8-9 gathering and discuss a roadmap aimed at ending the four-year war in Syria.

Ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi and several secular figures behind Egypt's 2011 uprising went on trial on Saturday, as the authorities kept a crackdown on all forms of dissent.

The trial for "insulting the judiciary" is the fifth for Morsi, who was sentenced to death last week on charges connected with a mass prison break during the uprising that toppled longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak.