Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi traveled to the Sinai peninsula on Friday to meet with Coptic families who fled from the town of Rafah after receiving death threats, his Facebook page said.

Morsi was to meet Coptic Christian families "to reassure them," his official page on the social networking site said, as state television broadcast images of him attending Friday prayers at a mosque in North Sinai's capital El-Arish.

An Egyptian court on Thursday ordered the release of two Coptic Christian children accused of insulting Islam, a source in the prosecutor's office said.

He told AFP that prosecutor Abdel Meguid Mahmud took the decision because the accused, aged nine and 10, are minors, but the source did not specify if the charges were dropped.

An Egyptian court sentenced an associate of ousted president Hosni Mubarak's son Gamal on Thursday to seven years in jail for money-laundering.

Ahmed Ezz, a steel magnate and former senior official in Mubarak's now defunct National Democratic Party, was also fined a massive 19 billion Egyptian pounds ($3.1 billion/2.4 billion euros).

The United States warned on Saturday that U.S. women Christian missionaries in mainly Muslim Egypt face threats of terror attacks and urged vigilance.

"The embassy has credible information suggesting terrorist interest in targeting U.S. female missionaries in Egypt," the American mission in Cairo said in a statement on its website.

Prime Minister Hisham Qandil on Saturday denied that Copts had fled their homes in Egypt's Sinai peninsula, after officials and residents said the Christians left after receiving death threats from suspected Islamists.

"The instructions given by the Egyptian authorities is to protect the Coptic brothers wherever they may be," Qandil told reporters in remarks carried by the state-run MENA news agency.

Several Christian families have fled their homes in Egypt's Sinai peninsula after receiving death threats from suspected Islamist militants, officials and residents told AFP on Friday.

Last week, fliers began circulating in the town of Rafah on the Gaza Strip border demanding that its tiny Coptic population move out, residents said.

Egypt sees no reason to make changes to its peace treaty with Israel, presidential spokesman Yasser Ali said in statements carried Thursday by the state-owned paper Al-Ahram.

"There is no need for the moment to amend the Camp David agreement," said Ali who was accompanying President Mohammed Morsi in New York for the meetings of the U.N. General Assembly.

Prime Minister Najib Miqati is scheduled to address on Thursday the 67th General Assembly meeting held at the United Nations headquarters in New York around midnight Beirut time.

The premier contacted President Michel Suleiman to brief him on the meetings that he held in New York with top officials, according to a statement issued by Miqati's press office.

Egypt's new president on Wednesday hit out at Israel over its veiled threats to attack Iran's nuclear facilities and the deadlock in the Middle East peace process.

President Mohammed Morsi received a rousing ovation for his first speech to the 193-member U.N. General Assembly since becoming Egypt's first civilian, democratically elected leader in June.

A British judge on Wednesday halted the extradition of Abu Hamza to the United States on terror charges after the radical Islamist preacher lodged a last-ditch legal appeal.

The dramatic move came after the European Court of Human Rights on Monday effectively gave Britain the green light to deport the Egyptian born-cleric and four other suspects.