Iraq's Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi Sunday criticized the "slowness" of the U.S.-led international coalition against Islamic State jihadists in providing military support to his army.

The IS group last year took control of large swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria. 

British human rights lawyer Amal Clooney has disputed a story reporting how Egyptian officials warned her she risked arrest last year if she released a report in Cairo critical of the judiciary.

In an article for the Huffington Post, Clooney said it was "experts in Egyptian affairs" who issued the warning over a February 2014 report for the International Bar Association, not the authorities, as was reported in The Guardian.

Gunmen shot dead two Egyptian policemen in a pre-dawn attack while they were on patrol Tuesday in the southern city of Minya, the interior ministry said.

Policemen and soldiers have faced regular militant attacks since the army ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.

Egyptian health authorities on Monday reported the country's 10th death this year from bird flu, as well as the first case of H5N1 infection in the capital.

The death occurred last week in the southern province of Aswan, health ministry spokesman Hossam Abdel Ghaffar said.

Gunmen killed a policeman and wounded three others in a drive-by attack on a patrol in Egypt's second city Alexandria on Sunday, a security official told Agence France Presse.

"Armed men aboard a minibus opened fire on them and then made off," the official said.

Gunmen on a motorbike killed a policeman and wounded another in a drive-by shooting in the Egyptian capital on Saturday, the interior ministry said.

"Armed men on a motorcycle opened fire on the police before fleeing," ministry spokesman Hani Abdel Latif told AFP.

Police on Friday shot dead two members of Egypt's most active jihadist group Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, the interior ministry announced.

Egypt's authorities referred 438 supporters of ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi to military courts Saturday over violence that followed the bloody dispersal of Cairo sit-ins last year, judiciary sources said.

Since ex-army chief and now President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi deposed Morsi in July 2013, his followers have been the target of a relentless crackdown by the authorities, who are also accused of exploiting the judiciary in their fight against the Islamist opposition.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he supported Egypt's crackdown on tunnels linking the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip to the Sinai Peninsula and any other action the country took to protect itself from militants, according to a media report Thursday.

"We have supported all the precautionary measures taken by the Egyptian authorities to close the tunnels and stop the trafficking of arms and the passage of people between Gaza and the Sinai," Abbas said in an interview with Egyptian magazine Al-Ahram Al-Arabi due to be published on Saturday, extracts of which were published by MENA news agency.

Canada on Monday joined Britain in closing its embassy in Cairo to the public for security reasons, with neither country providing details about any specific threat.

The move comes amid increasing attacks by Islamist militants in Egypt and calls from the extremist Islamic State group for attacks on Western targets.