Gunmen shot dead on Wednesday three Egyptian policemen in the Sinai Peninsula, where militants regularly launch attacks on security forces, the interior ministry said.

The three policemen, including a colonel, were traveling in a pick-up truck in North Sinai's provincial capital El-Arish when assailants in a car shot at them and fled, the ministry said in a statement.

An Egyptian court has revoked a government ban on a film by Lebanese star Haifa Wehbe that had been deemed sexually provocative, judicial sources said on Wednesday.

In April, Prime Minister Ibrahim Mahlab suspended screening of "Halawet Rooh" (Beauty of Soul), a movie said to have been inspired by Monica Bellucci's 2000 hit, "Malena".

Egypt reopened the Rafah border crossing with Gaza on Wednesday for the first time since its closure in late October after a bombing in the Sinai Peninsula, officials said.

The crossing, which is the only access point to the Palestinian territory not controlled by Israel, will open for four hours on Wednesday and Thursday, a government official said.

Rescue teams battled to free 15 people trapped in the rubble of a Cairo apartment block early Tuesday after it collapsed during the night, killing at least 10 others.

The Egyptian capital's emergency services chief General Mamduh Abdelkader said that investigators were still probing the cause of the collapse in the poor eastern neighbourhood of Matariya but that illegal construction work was suspected.

Everywhere you turn, walls in the Gaza Strip are covered with paint -- brightly colored slogans, political portraits and prose.

For youth in the besieged enclave packed with 1.8 million people, graffiti is an important tool for self-expression and fighting back.

Former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh on Monday accused his successor of helping Shiite Huthi militias overrun Sanaa to curb the growing influence of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood.

Saleh, who has been slapped with U.N. Security Council and U.S. sanctions for obstructing peace, said in a television interview he had played "no role" in supporting the unopposed seizure of the capital by the Huthis, known also as Ansarullah, in September. 

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi left for Rome Monday on his first European trip since ousting his Islamist predecessor and overseeing a crackdown that has killed hundreds.

Sisi is to meet Pope Francis at 1330 GMT on the first Vatican visit by an Egyptian leader in eight years, officials said.

An Egyptian appeals court on Sunday confirmed jail terms for at least 85 students convicted of illegal demonstrations and vandalism in protests backing ousted Islamist president Mohammed Morsi, officials said.

Hundreds of students have been tried in civilian courts after violence on campuses, bastions of pro-Islamist activists following the army's overthrow of Morsi in July 2013.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said in an interview published Sunday that he would be prepared to send troops to a future Palestinian state to help stabilize it.

Sisi, who begins his first European trip on Monday since ousting his Islamist predecessor, made the comments in an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.

Egypt will offer a slew of projects to domestic and foreign investors at a conference in March aimed at kick-starting an economy battered by years of political unrest, the prime minister said Saturday.

Falling tourist revenues and slowing investments have left Egypt's economy in ruins after nearly four years of turmoil that saw two presidents ousted following mass street protests.