The NATO military alliance said Wednesday it was monitoring two Iranian warships that have entered the Mediterranean Sea, a presence that has unnerved Israel.

"We follow events in the region and we follow these two Iranian warships with as much interest as we do any other warships in the region," said NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu.

Two Iranian warships that have sailed from the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean are carrying advanced missiles to Hizbullah, Israeli sources told Maariv daily.

The sources said in remarks published in the Israeli daily that the warships are carrying missiles, arms, ammunition and night-vision goggles to Hizbullah in Lebanon.

Israel put its navy on high alert and said it would respond immediately to any "provocation" as two Iranian warships sailed through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean on Tuesday.

The Iranian vessels entered the southeastern Mediterranean after going up the canal for the first time since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, reportedly en route for Syria, in a move taking them past Israeli territorial waters.

Lebanon’s highest Shiite religious authority has slammed the international tribunal as a political tool designed to target Hizbullah and urged Premier-designate Najib Miqati’s cabinet not to cooperate with it.

The Higher Shiite Islamic Council’s religious and executive committees said in a statement following a meeting on Monday that the council considers the Special Tribunal for Lebanon as “null and void.”

British Prime Minister David Cameron held talks in Cairo on Monday, on the first trip by a foreign leader to the Egyptian capital since the downfall of longtime president Hosni Mubarak.

Cameron held talks with Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi, the country's de facto leader since a popular uprising toppled Mubarak, the official MENA news agency reported.

Egypt has arrested two former government ministers and a businessman on suspicion of diverting public funds, a judicial source told Agence France Presse on Thursday.

Once widely feared former interior minister Habib al-Adly was also arrested on suspicion of money-laundering and ordered held for 15 days, the same source said.

Iranian officials were in contact with their counterparts in Egypt to secure the passage of two warships through the Suez Canal, Tehran's English-language Press TV reported on Thursday.

The vessels intend to transit the canal, the channel's website quoted an unnamed Iranian navy official as saying.

The head of a 22-member Hizbullah cell who escaped from an Egyptian prison during the Cairo uprising appeared on Wednesday at a televised rally organized by the party in Dahiyeh, the southern suburb of Beirut.

Mohammed Youssef Mansour, alias Sami Shehab, was lauded as a "freed prisoner" and a "brother in our struggle" as he joined a group of Hizbullah officials at a gathering to mark the group's Martyrs' Day, television images showed.

Skilled thieves slid down ropes from a skylight at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo while riots raged outside, targeting priceless ancient treasures, the minister for antiquities said Wednesday.

The world renowned collection was burgled last month during anti-government protests, and several artifacts are still missing, including famous statues depicting King Tutankhamen and Pharaoh Akhenaton.

Israel's deputy Prime Minister, Dan Meridor, has hoped that “the camp of the radicals” that includes Hizbullah would be defeated in the region.

Dan Meridor, who is also Minister of Intelligence and Atomic Energy, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Prague that Egyptian protesters' demands for freedom and free election were positive.