Hundreds of Palestinians demonstrated outside Egypt's diplomatic mission in Gaza City Friday, to protest a Cairo court ruling designating Hamas's armed wing as a terrorist group.

They waved green Hamas flags and chanted in support of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades: "Qassam are the pride of the nation, not terrorists!"

The United States condemned life sentences meted out Wednesday to more than 200 Egyptian activists over the 2011 revolt against former president Hosni Mubarak.

Egypt is a key ally of the U.S. in counter-terrorism operations in the Sinai, but Washington has been caught in a dilemma on how to maintain ties while not appearing to sanction the rolling back of democracy.

Al-Azhar, the prestigious seat of Islamic learning that is based in Cairo but respected by Sunni Muslims across the world, has steadfastly condemned gruesome executions claimed by the Islamic State group.

The millennium-old institution has emerged as a leading theological center of Sunni Islam, the main branch of the religion, and shows a will to promote moderate Islam and dialogue with Christians.

Al-Jazeera journalist Peter Greste arrived home in Australia on Thursday saying he had dreamt of returning to his family on each of the 400 days of his detention in Egypt.

"I can't tell you how ecstatic I am to be here," said the award-winning correspondent who was deported on Sunday from Cairo, where he was held for allegedly aiding the blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood.

An Egyptian court Wednesday sentenced to life 230 secular activists from the 2011 revolt against long-time strongman Hosni Mubarak, including leading campaigner Ahmed Douma, an official said.

Thirty-nine others, all minors, were jailed for 10 years. 

Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam's most prestigious centre of learning, expressed outrage Wednesday at the Islamic State group for burning to death a captive Jordanian pilot, saying its militants deserve to be killed or crucified.

After a video was released showing the caged fighter pilot, Maaz al-Kassasbeh, dying engulfed in flames, the Cairo-based authority's head, Ahmed al-Tayib, expressed his "strong dismay at this cowardly act".

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi announced Tuesday that Egypt will continue to support Lebanon, stressing the importance of “spreading the values of coexistence” in the Arab countries.

After a meeting between Sisi and Lebanon's Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Latif Daryan, the Egyptian presidential spokesman Alaa Youssef said that “President Sisi welcomed Lebanon's mufti and stressed that Egypt will keep backing and supporting Lebanon.”

Hamas accused Egypt's army of firing at Palestinian security outposts in the Gaza Strip Tuesday, just days after Cairo declared the Islamist movement's military wing a terrorist group.

Gaza's Hamas-run interior ministry condemned "the Egyptian army for firing this morning directly at two positions along the southern Gaza border."

Al-Jazeera journalist Mohamed Fahmy has renounced his Egyptian citizenship, his family said Tuesday, in a bid to follow his Australian colleague Peter Greste in being released from a Cairo jail.

Fahmy's surrender of his Egyptian passport is a necessary step for him to be freed and deported as a foreign national under a decree issued by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in November. He also has Canadian citizenship.

A bomb wounded three civilians, one of whom later died, when it exploded on the outskirts of Egypt's second city of Alexandria, police said.

A 12-year-old boy was among those hurt in the explosion near a residential neighborhood on the western outskirts of the Mediterranean city.