Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq headed a security delegation to Egypt on Sunday to purchase military equipment as part of the Saudi grant to the Lebanese army, the al-Joumhouria daily reported.

"The visit aims to purchase military equipment made in Egypt," for the benefit of the army "and to put efforts together in a bid to combat the spread of terrorism," the daily said on Monday.

A bomb on a train in Egypt killed four people including two policemen, officials said Thursday, while blasts in the Cairo metro and near a presidential palace wounded several others.

The makeshift bomb exploded in a carriage late on Wednesday as policemen inspected it after the train stopped at a station in the province of Menufiya north of the capital.

A bomb hidden in a rubbish bin wounded three people in the Egyptian capital before dawn on Saturday, the interior ministry said.

The three victims, who suffered slight wounds, were employees of a cleaning service, according to spokesman Hani Abdel Latif.

Egypt's authorities banned a prominent activist of the 2011 uprising, Asma Mahfouz, from leaving the country late Tuesday while on her way to Bangkok, a Cairo airport official said.

Mahfouz, a well known youth leader, was a leading figure of the uprising that toppled former president Hosni Mubarak in early 2011.

As the new academic term began in Egypt, riot police were standing guard at Cairo's universities to quash any repeat of Islamist-led protests that turned campuses nationwide into battlefields.

The authorities have tightened security at 12 leading universities across the country -- the last bastions of protests backing ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi after a nationwide government crackdown crushed his supporters, leaving hundreds dead and thousands jailed.

A roadside bomb killed two Egyptian policemen and wounded nine in the town of El Arish in the restive north of the Sinai Peninsula late Thursday, security officials said.

Sinai-based militants have killed scores of policemen and soldiers since the military overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July last year.

A bomb exploded in the center of the Egyptian capital Cairo late Tuesday wounding 12 people, security and medical officials said.

A police officer on the scene told Agence France Presse the explosive device was placed near the entrance of a metro station  close to the court house, apparently targeting policemen standing guard.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry left for Cairo Saturday to back calls to aid the Gaza Strip, amid fears donors may fail to raise $4 billion needed to rebuild the Palestinian territory.

Egypt will be the first step on a fresh whirlwind tour for the 70-year-old top U.S. diplomat, who will also hold meetings in Paris and Vienna on the crisis in Ukraine and efforts to reach an Iran nuclear deal with a deadline just a few weeks away.

An Egyptian court Saturday jailed eight men, including two Muslim Brotherhood leaders, for up to 15 years over the torture of a lawyer during the 2011 uprising against ex-president Hosni Mubarak, judicial sources said.

Thousands of Muslim Brotherhood members and supporters have been jailed, with hundreds receiving lengthy prison terms, in a brutal government crackdown since the army ousted Islamist president Mohammed Morsi last July.

Talks in Cairo between rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah on reviving their unity government were taking place in a "positive atmosphere" on Wednesday, officials said.

The two-day talks, which began early Wednesday, come after a joint Palestinian delegation and Israel agreed to hold separate indirect talks in late October to thrash out a lasting truce in Gaza.