Noble Energy began on Wednesday to deliver natural gas from a new field off southern Israel in a bid to avoid electricity shortages due to a cut in Egyptian supplies, the company said.

"Noble Energy and its partners are making good on their promise to do everything possible to bring as much gas as possible to the Israeli market in the absence of gas delivery from Egypt," it said in a statement.

Egypt's parliament on Tuesday elected a commission tasked with drafting the country's new constitution following last week's agreement that capped a nearly three-month row.

A joint session of the upper and lower houses of parliament elected the 100 members who will sit on the constitutional panel, though their names were not immediately made public.

Six far-right militants were arrested Tuesday after four Egyptians were assaulted in an industrial suburb of Athens, police said, amid an increase in attacks on immigrants in the crisis-hit nation.

A local Muslim leader accused Greek politicians, particularly those on the right, of stoking racist violence ahead of a general election on Sunday that could determine whether the country will stay in the eurozone.

A gunfight during the night between two feuding tribes in Egypt's south has killed 12 people, a police official said on Sunday.

The official said the battle in the southern Aswan province, in which automatic weapons were used, left three wounded. The gunfight erupted as a dispute over land, he said.

Egyptian prosecutors asked parliament on Saturday for permission to investigate an Islamist MP police say was caught performing an "indecent" act with a woman in public, official media reported.

The official MENA news agency quoted a police report saying that Ali Wanis, a cleric and MP for the ultra-conservative al-Nur party, was found engaged in an "indecent" act with a 22-year-old woman in a car parked on a highway on Thursday.

Egypt's state television has spiked an ad urging citizens to be wary of foreigners who could be spies in disguise, after critics accused the state broadcaster of stoking "xenophobia," an official said Saturday.

"The ad was removed on Friday night because we were concerned that it was being misunderstood," Ali Abderrahman, president of public channels Nile Drama and Nile cinema, told Agence France Presse.

Egypt's political parties on Thursday agreed on the formation of a commission tasked with drafting a new constitution, capping a row that lasted nearly three months, officials said.

The agreement was struck at a meeting between representatives of the political parties, including Islamists who dominate parliament, and Egypt's military ruler, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, the sources said.

The health of Egypt's ex-president Hosni Mubarak has deteriorated since his transfer to prison after he was sentenced to life in jail over the killing of protesters, the official news agency said Thursday.

Mubarak was suffering from "acute depression" and hypertension since his arrival at Tora prison, south of Cairo, where he has been held in a medical wing since the verdicts in his trial were delivered on Saturday, MENA reported.

Crowds of Egyptians flocked to Cairo's iconic Tahrir Square on Tuesday for a mass demonstration to protest against verdicts handed down in ex-president Hosni Mubarak's murder trial.

Marchers prepared to leave from several mosques around the capital led by the runners-up in last months’ presidential election first round -- Hamdeen Sabbahi, Abdel Moneim Abul Fotouh and Khaled Ali-- to join thousands already in the square.

Ex-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak suffered an "emotional breakdown" in prison on Tuesday, days after he was sentenced to life over the death of protesters last year, a senior interior ministry official said.

The ailing 84-year-old's "health deteriorated while in prison," the official told Agance France Press without describing the nature of the breakdown.