Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Sunday removed the powerful general intelligence chief appointed just days after the ouster of Islamist leader Mohamed Morsi in July last year.

General Mohamed Farid El-Tohamy was replaced by his deputy General Khaled Mahmoud Fuad Fawzy, Sisi's office said in a statement, without specifying why.

An Egyptian court has jailed a Suez Canal shipping services manager for 10 years on charges of spying for Israel about naval movements through the strategic waterway, state media reported.

The court in the canal city of Port Said also handed down life sentences in absentia to two Israelis it found guilty of being the Egyptian's handlers, the official MENA news agency reported late Saturday.

The United States has delivered 10 Apache helicopters to Egypt in recent weeks after lifting part of a freeze on aid to the north African nation, a U.S. official said Saturday.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had been promising Cairo's new leadership that the aircraft -- aimed to join counter-terrorism operations in the Sinai peninsula -- would be delivered soon.

Egypt is to reopen the Rafah border crossing with Gaza Sunday for the second time in two months to allow those stranded in Egypt to enter the Palestinian territory, officials said.

The Rafah crossing is the only access point to the Gaza Strip not controlled by Israel.

U.S. President Barack Obama spoke to his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Thursday and expressed concern over mass trials and the continued detention of journalists and peaceful activists.

During a telephone call, the White House said, Obama encouraged Sisi to "invest in the political, economic, and social aspirations of the Egyptian people." 

An Egyptian court sentenced 40 backers of ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi to up to 15 years in jail Thursday for violence including torching churches, a judicial source said.

Followers of Morsi have been the target of a relentless crackdown by the authorities since he was deposed in July 2013 by ex-army chief and now President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

Four crew members were killed, two of them Egyptian and two Emirati, when their military aircraft crashed during joint exercises on Wednesday, officials said.

The crash occurred in Egypt, the UAE's official news agency WAM said.

Six months after Abdel Fattah al-Sisi became Egypt's president after crushing his opponents, criticism of his regime is either whispered or left unspoken amid stifling curbs on freedom of expression.

Twenty-sex men suspected of having organized or taken part in homosexual orgies at a public bath in Egypt are to go on trial for "debauchery", a judicial official said Wednesday.

He said the men were arrested on December 7 at a hammam in the Azbakeya district of central Cairo and are to go on trial Sunday.

Swedish police have arrested two Egyptian men and a Lebanese woman for illegally transporting asylum seekers into the country aboard a private jet, the police said Tuesday.