A bomb blast in front of a mobile phone service store in Egypt's textile town of Mahallah killed one person and wounded another 11 people on Friday, police said.

Militants have regularly set off bombs in Egyptian cities, mostly targeting police, since the 2013 military overthrow of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi unleashed a deadly government crackdown on his supporters.

A train crashed into a school bus east of the Egyptian capital on Friday, killing at least seven people including children, police and health officials said.

The collision occurred at an unauthorized railway crossing on the Cairo-Ismailiya desert road, police said, adding that the bus had failed to stop at the crossing and was hit by the moving train.

In a tunnel dug deep underneath the besieged Gaza Strip, masked gunmen from Islamic Jihad ferry rockets and mortars back and forth, preparing for the next conflict with Israel.

Six months ago, the Palestinian militant group emerged battered and bruised from a 50-day conflict with Israel, where it fought alongside fellow Islamist movement Hamas, which controls Gaza.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said Thursday Russia could play a decisive role in resolving the crisis in Libya, during a rare visit by a European leader to Moscow.

Renzi held talks with President Vladimir Putin in a visit that also focused on the conflict in Ukraine and Russia's chilly relations with the European Union over its backing of  separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine.

This small Gulf nation, known for its soaring skyscrapers and mercantile bent, is making itself into the most stalwart ally of the Arab world's biggest country.

The United Arab Emirates has pumped billions of dollars into Egypt and is lining up investors to try to stabilize its damaged economy, while building military cooperation. In their deepening relationship, an economically exhausted Egypt benefits from the UAE's finances, and the U.S.-allied Emirates gets a heavyweight with extensive manpower on its side in a region deeply unstable with threats of militant violence and Iranian expansion.

The foreign ministers of Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia said early on Friday they had reached the basis of an agreement on the sharing of Nile waters and Ethiopia's Grand Renaissance Dam.

"A full agreement has been reached between our three countries on the principles of the use of the eastern Nile Basin and the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam," Sudanese Foreign Minister Ali Karti told reporters early on Friday morning.

Egypt's Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim, whose security forces have struggled to curb attacks by Islamist militants, was replaced in a cabinet reshuffle on Thursday, the presidency announced.

The removal of Ibrahim follows mounting concern over the militant attacks that have surged since Islamist president Mohamed Morsi's ouster in 2013.

Energy and Water Minister Arthur Nazarian and the Lebanese Petroleum Administration stressed Wednesday that any data resulting from geological surveys for the country's offshore gas and oil “has not been handed over to any side,” refuting media reports.

This data “is the property of the Lebanese state, and the ministry and the administration are exerting efforts to maintain it and safeguard it in line with the applicable laws,” Nazarian and the LPA said in a joint statement.

Egypt's state-sponsored Islamic authority warned women Wednesday against marrying fighters from the Islamic State group online, saying such unions would push them into a "circle of terrorism."

Dar al-Ifta, the body that issues rulings on Islamic sharia law, said it made the warning after noticing several IS calls on social networks for girls to marry its jihadists "through video conferences."

An Egyptian court upheld Wednesday 10-year jail terms against two policemen convicted of killing an activist whose death rallied protesters in the 2011 revolt that toppled ex-strongman Hosni Mubarak.

In March 2014, a lower court handed the two policemen the jail terms after a retrial for the manslaughter and torture of Khalid Saeed in 2010 at an Internet cafe in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria.