Egyptian authorities Sunday hanged six men convicted of killing soldiers, police said, ignoring appeals to spare them amid allegations two of them had been in custody at the time of their alleged crimes.

A military court upheld the death sentences last March, following a trial in which the six were convicted of carrying out the attacks in the months after the army's overthrow of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.

The United States voiced alarm Sunday at death sentences handed to Egypt's ousted president Mohamed Morsi and dozens of others, a verdict experts called a declaration of "total war" on his Muslim Brotherhood.

Morsi was among more than 100 defendants ordered by an Egyptian court on Saturday to face the death penalty for their role in a mass jailbreak during the 2011 uprising.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday attacked the death sentence handed out by an Egyptian court to former president Mohamed Morsi, saying it was like a return to "ancient Egypt".

"The popularly-elected president of Egypt... has unfortunately been sentenced to death. Egypt is turning back into ancient Egypt," Erdogan said at a rally in Istanbul, accusing the West of "turning a blind eye" to the 2013 coup that ousted Morsi.

Mohamed Morsi, who was sentenced to death on Saturday, was Egypt's first democratically elected president until the army overthrew him after a year of tumultuous rule sparked mass street protests.

An Egyptian court issued the sentence to the bearded 64-year-old and more than 100 co-defendants over jail breaks during the 2011 uprising that ousted his predecessor, Hosni Mubarak.

An Egyptian court sentenced deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi and more than 100 others to death on Saturday for their role in a mass jailbreak during the 2011 uprising.

Hours after the ruling, gunmen shot dead three judges in the strife-torn Sinai Peninsula.

Egyptian bomb disposal expert Diaa Fathy had long predicted he would die in a flash, before that fateful day in January when a bomb exploded on a busy road leading to the pyramids.

Fathy's death, captured in graphic video footage that went viral on the Internet, was not the first among the country's bomb disposal squad, which has defended its training program in the face of questions over its professionalism.

A senior Muslim Brotherhood official died in Egypt on Wednesday after more than a year in detention, the interior ministry said. 

Farid Ismail, a former lawmaker and official in the Freedom and Justice Party, the Brotherhood's political arm, died in a Cairo hospital of liver failure aged 58, medical and police officials said. 

Britain's ambassador to Egypt weighed in Wednesday with a quip on the controversy stirred by the justice minister's remark that becoming a judge was too lofty an ambition for sons of cleaners.

"You want a job at the British embassy? We welcome everybody. We welcome sons of cleaners," John Casson wrote in Arabic on his Twitter account.

The International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor said Tuesday that she was ready to investigate crimes committed by the Islamic State in Libya, where the United Nations is pushing for a peace deal. 

Fatou Bensouda told the U.N. Security Council that the court's jurisdiction "extends to such alleged crimes" by jihadist groups aligned with IS.

Egypt's Justice Minister Mahfouz Saber, who stirred protests with remarks that becoming a judge was too lofty an ambition for the sons of cleaners, has resigned, the premier announced Monday.

Prime Minister Ibrahim Mahlab said he accepted the resignation, two days after the controversial remarks made in a television interview.