Egypt's prosecutor general on Monday ordered the arrest of five young opposition activists on charges of inciting violence, following clashes last week in Cairo, state news agency MENA reported.

The order came as a warning from President Mohamed Morsi that political figures could be sanctioned if found to have stirred up the unrest drew the ire of the opposition and newspapers.

A warning from President Mohamed Morsi that political figures could be sanctioned if found to have stirred up unrest in Egypt drew the ire of the opposition and newspapers on Monday.

"If investigations prove that certain political figures are implicated, the necessary measures will be taken against them, whatever their status," Morsi said on his Twitter account on Sunday, also carried on state television.

The Egyptian state prosecutor decided on Sunday to extradite to Libya two former regime officials wanted on charges of corruption, a judicial source told Agence France Presse.

Former Libyan ambassador Ali Maria and and Mohammed Ibrahim, the brother of senior Gadhafi-era official Ahmed Ibrahim, were arrested in Cairo on March 19 along with Moammar Gadhafi's cousin Ahmed Qaddaf al-Dam.

Egypt's ruling Muslim Brotherhood deputy leader on Saturday said opponents have taken to violence after proving incapable at politics, a day after vicious clashes outside the Islamists' headquarters.

Rashad al-Bayoumi, the Brotherhood's deputy Supreme Guide, said Friday's violence that wounded more than 160 people was "a tragedy."

A senior Egyptian Islamist on Saturday called on France to withdraw its forces from Mali, comparing its intervention in the African state with the United States campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

France's intervention in January to rout Islamist militants amounted to "colonialism," said Rashad al-Bayoumi, the deputy leader of Egypt's ruling Muslim Brotherhood movement.

Protesters set fire to the headquarters in the Nile Delta city of Mahalla of the Muslim Brotherhood Saturday as clashes took place at the Islamist group's offices in Cairo, the MENA news agency said.

Demonstrators threw petrol bombs at the building which then caught fire, the official news agency said.

Armed Bedouin tribesmen in Egypt's Sinai peninsula abducted on Friday two tourists, an Israeli man and a Norwegian woman, as they traveled between two beach resorts, police said.

Six gunmen intercepted the tourists' car and forced them into their truck, the officials said. The pair had been traveling between the southern resort of Taba, on the border with Israel, and Dahab.

Egyptian villagers lynched a suspected car thief on Thursday, security sources said, in the latest in a spate of such vigilante killings in the face of growing lawlessness.

The lynching, in the Nile Delta village of Ezbat al-Gindy, came days after residents of another village strung up two suspected criminals in an incident described by the justice minister as a sign of the "death of the state".

Egypt has granted the Muslim Brotherhood non-governmental organization status, a minister said on Thursday, a day after judges said the Islamist movement had no legal standing.

The once banned movement, now in power, has come under increased scrutiny by the opposition and the largely hostile media, who say it is a secretive group with too much influence over President Mohamed Morsi, a former Brotherhood leader.

Egypt's ruling Muslim Brotherhood warned on Thursday that it will defend its headquarters as hundreds of its members gathered outside the building ahead of an opposition protest.

The Islamists were bussed in to stand guard outside the building in Cairo, where opposition activists who plan to hold a protest on Friday had previously clashed with Brotherhood members.