Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in Cairo on Tuesday agreed to schedule new talks on a durable Gaza ceasefire for the last week of October, a Hamas official said.

A delay in the talks after their first Egypt-mediated negotiations since the end last month of a devastating 50-day war in Gaza had been expected, because of upcoming Jewish and Muslim holidays.

An Egyptian military aircraft crashed while on a training mission on Sunday after a technical failure, killing six soldiers, the army said.

The aircraft crashed in an area about 100 kilometers (62 miles) south of Cairo, an army statement said.

At least two policemen were killed Sunday in a bombing near a checkpoint outside Egypt's foreign ministry headquarters, officials said, shattering a months-long respite from deadly attacks in Cairo.

The blast brought down a tree onto a car, meters (yards) from a pool of blood where one victim had fallen, an Agence France-Presse correspondent said.

Saudi Arabia has agreed to fund the restoration of Cairo's Al-Azhar mosque in recognition of its role as a "beacon of moderate Islam," the Egyptian president's office said Thursday.

The announcement came after talks between President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and visiting Saudi intelligence chief Prince Khaled bin Bandar bin Abdel Aziz on the coalition Washington is building against the Islamic State group (IS) in Iraq and Syria.

A textile dyeing factory collapsed in Egypt, killing six people and injuring 22 in an accident blamed on poor construction, authorities said Monday.

Israel's deputy foreign minister warned Thursday that Hamas was likely to resume "violence" if it feels it has made no political gains from upcoming talks in Cairo.

Hamas's exiled deputy leader said Wednesday that indirect talks with Israel to consolidate a Gaza ceasefire are to resume in Cairo in mid-September.

Fifty days of deadly fighting between Israel and Gaza militants which killed more than 2,140 Palestinians and 73 on the Israeli side, ended on August 26 with an open-ended truce agreement.

A huge power outage blacked out most of Cairo on Thursday causing major disruption across the city of some 20 million people at the height of the morning rush hour.

Services were completely suspended on one of the city's three metro lines and heavily disrupted on a second, the state MENA news agency reported.

International donors will meet in Cairo to pledge funds for the reconstruction of Gaza as soon as a lasting ceasefire is reached between Israel and the Palestinians, Norway announced Monday.

The funds raised under the aegis of Egypt and Norway will be released to Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, said Norwegian Foreign Minister Boerge Brende, whose country heads the international coordination committee for aid to the Palestinians.

Israel warned Sunday it would not countenance any long-term truce deal that did not answer its security needs as Gaza ceasefire talks were set to resume in Cairo.

Egyptian-brokered indirect negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians are taking place during a five-day lull in the fighting which is due to expire at midnight (2100 GMT) on Monday.