Five Egyptian police were killed Tuesday during a shootout with assailants in the northwest of the country, security officials said.

The unidentified men opened fire on a police car carrying an officer and four agents on the coastal highway between second city Alexandria and Marsa Matruh, close to the Libyan border.

The Gaza truce drawn up by Egypt shows Cairo has an "indispensable" role mediating conflicts between Israel and Hamas, despite strained ties with the Palestinian faction, analysts said Tuesday.

Israel withdrew all of its forces from Gaza on Tuesday after nearly a month-long deadly campaign, as a 72-hour ceasefire announced by Cairo went into effect.

Three remaining members of a Palestinian delegation negotiating a longer-term truce in Gaza were on their way to Cairo Tuesday after entering Egypt through the Rafah crossing, state media reported.

Israel and Hamas halted their fighting in Gaza from 0500 GMT Tuesday after a three-day temporary truce brokered by Cairo went into effect. Israel also withdrew its troops from the coastal enclave.

A U.S. soldier with the Multinational Force and Observers mission (MFO) in Egypt's Sinai was wounded when gunmen shot at his camp late Monday, a security official said.

The restive Sinai Peninsula has  witnessed a surge in militant attacks since the army ousted Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013. 

Egypt arrested the head of a Cairo orphanage on Monday after a video showing him allegedly beating young children triggered outrage on social media, officials said.

The footage shared widely on sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter shows a man said to be Osama Mohamed Othman hitting the children with a stick and kicking them as they ran away, screaming in pain.

Israel and the Palestinians have agreed a new 72-hour Gaza ceasefire that would start at 0500 GMT Tuesday, said a senior official in Egypt, which is hosting truce talks.

"Egypt's contacts with relevant parties have achieved a commitment for a 72-hour truce in Gaza starting from 0500 GMT tomorrow morning, and an agreement for the rest of the relevant delegations to come to Cairo to conduct further negotiations," the official told Agence France-Presse.

Up to 10,000 Egyptians fleeing the fighting in Libya are still stranded at the border with Tunisia, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukri said Monday on a visit to Tunis.

"So far we have evacuated around 2,500... we don't have exact statistics but between 5,000 and 10,000 people" are still waiting to leave, he said at a news conference after meeting Tunisia Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa.

Israel's right to security does not justify its actions in Gaza, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Monday, as he called for a political solution to be "imposed" by the international community.

Thousands of Egyptians who have been seeking to flee strife-torn Libya for days were being airlifted home Sunday after Tunisia's initial refusal to let them in sparked clashes at the border.

Buses picked up dozens of them on Saturday afternoon at the Ras Jedir border crossing to take them to Jerba airport, 100 kilometers (60 miles) north, where flights were to evacuate them to Egypt, Agence France-Presse journalists said.

A Hamas team arrived in Cairo on Sunday for talks with Egyptian mediators on a possible truce in Gaza, an airport official and state news agency MENA said.

The delegation is led by senior Hamas official Ezzat al-Rishq, the sources said.