Ex-army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, lauded for ousting the Islamist president but feared as a potential autocrat, is poised to sweep Egypt's election on the back of a yearning for stability.

The election on Monday and Tuesday caps three years of political turmoil that has seen two presidents ousted following mass protests, thousands killed in clashes and militant attacks, and an economy left in tatters.

Egyptian jihadist group Ansar Beit al-Maqdis denied Sunday that its leader has been killed, after security sources said the group's commander Shadi al-Menei had been shot dead in an ambush.

The group also denied Menei was its leader, in a statement published on Islamist militant Internet forums accompanied by a picture of him reading a report about his "death" on a laptop.

An Egyptian court jailed 19 supporters of ousted Islamist president Mohammed Morsi for five years on Saturday for storming the offices of the head of the prestigious Al-Azhar Islamic institution, judicial sources said.

The army-installed government has rounded up thousands of Morsi's supporters and tried them in mass hearings since his ouster in July last year.

Presidential frontrunner Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who stepped down as army chief to run for office, urged Egyptians on Friday to vote in large numbers in next week's election.

Sisi, lauded by millions for having ousted Islamist president Mohammed Morsi last July, is expected to trounce his only rival, leftist Hamdeen Sabbahi, in the vote on Monday and Tuesday.

Two people were killed in clashes between supporters of Egypt's ousted Islamist president Mohammed Morsi and security forces Friday, the final day of campaigning for next week's presidential election, officials said.

One person was killed and 20 others were wounded in Cairo, the health ministry said.

Prominent columnist Fahmy Howeidy, who strongly criticized the army's ouster of Egypt's elected Islamist president, was barred from leaving the country on Friday, officials at Cairo airport said.

Howeidy's name was on a stop list at Cairo airport, preventing him from boarding a flight to Spain, they said.

After having spearheaded a 2011 uprising that toppled Egypt's strongman and former air force chief Hosni Mubarak, many young revolutionaries are now in jail and an ex-army chief is about to become president.

Their dramatic reversal in fortunes could well presage a return to the repression of the Mubarak era, activists fear.

A top Egyptian jihadist has been killed, security officials said Friday, ahead of next week's election expected to sweep ex-army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi into the presidency on a pledge to eradicate terrorism.

Shadi el-Menei, a senior commander of Egypt's deadliest militant group Ansar Beit al-Maqdis (Partisans of Jerusalem), was gunned down in an overnight am

Leading Gulf monarchies are staunchly backing Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, Egypt's presidential frontrunner, in the hope that their generous financial help will bolster his campaign to crush the Muslim Brotherhood and indirectly secure their own regimes.

"An absence of stability in Egypt means instability in the Gulf," says Emirati political science professor Abdulkhaleq Abdulla.

Seven police conscripts and two civilians were wounded on Wednesday in a bomb blast in the town of Al-Arish, the capital of Egypt's restive northern Sinai peninsula, security officials said.

A child was run over by a car in the aftermath of the attack, as panic erupted on the scene, the officials added.