Egyptian troops clashed with gunmen in the Sinai Peninsula early on Sunday, leaving three soldiers and six militants dead, as they pressed a drive to flush out armed Islamists, state television reported.

Arab foreign ministers postponed a planned meeting on the Syrian conflict that had been due to take place in Saudi Arabia later on Sunday, a top Arab League official said.

Police and gunmen traded fire in the Sinai town of El-Arish on Thursday as security forces pushed ahead with a campaign aimed at quelling a surge in Islamist militancy, state television reported.

The

Gunmen on Sunday killed 15 guards in Egypt near the border with Israel before stealing armoured vehicles and crossing into the Jewish state where one vehicle was destroyed by a helicopter.

President

Egypt's former vice president Omar Suleiman, long-time spy chief to deposed president Hosni Mubarak, died on Thursday in the United States aged 77, the official MENA news agency reported.

The head of Egypt's military took a tough line on Sunday on the Muslim Brotherhood, warning that he won't let the fundamentalist group dominate the country, only hours after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged him to work with Egypt's elected Islamist leaders.

Tomatoes and shoes were thrown at US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's motorcade by Egyptian protesters who shouted, "Monica, Monica, Monica" as she left the newly reopened American Consulate in Alexandria.

A new Egyptian satellite TV channel, exclusively operated and managed by women wearing the niqab or the full-face veil, will start airing from July 20, the first day of Ramadan.

Egypt's Islamist-led parliament reconvened on Tuesday in an open challenge to the generals who dissolved the assembly last month, stirring up tensions with the military just 10 days into Mohamed Morsi

Egypt's top court on Monday rejected a decree by President Mohamed Morsi to reinstate the parliament it ruled invalid, setting him on a collision course with the judiciary and the military which enfor