An Egyptian court sentenced 13 supporters of deposed Islamist president Mohammed Morsi Saturday to prison terms ranging from five to 88 years for rioting, a judicial source said.

They were accused of "rioting, sabotage and public order offences" in the southern towns of Samalut and Minya during protests against a bloody crackdown in Cairo on August 14 when hundreds of people were killed, the source said.

Egypt recorded its first MERS infection after a person who arrived from Saudi Arabia tested positive for the virus, state media reported on Saturday.

MERS infections have killed 92 people in Saudi Arabia, where the coronavirus was first detected in humans in 2012.

Two people were killed in clashes on Friday between protesters and police in the Egyptian city of Fayoum, security officials said, in the latest Islamist demonstrations against the military-installed regime.

Supporters of ousted Islamist president Mohammed Morsi have pressed a protest campaign since his overthrow last July, despite an extensive crackdown that has killed more than 1,400 people and imprisoned thousands.

Prosecution witnesses in the jailbreak trial of Egypt's ousted president Mohammed Morsi on Wednesday accused members of Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and Lebanon's Hizbullah of attacking Egyptian prisons during the 2011 uprising.

The trial, one of three against Morsi, is part of a government crackdown that has targeted him and his Muslim Brotherhood movement since his ouster by the army in July.

A police brigadier general was killed when a bomb exploded under his car on Wednesday, security officials said, in the fifth such targeted attack in Egypt's capital within a week.

The blast in the upscale western suburb of October 6 killed Ahmed Zaki, a commander of Egypt's central security forces who have spearheaded a crackdown on supporters of ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.

Bahraini authorities caught two inmates Wednesday after their escape from a main jail prompted the dismissal of the Gulf kingdom's prisons chief, the interior ministry said.

The pair who escaped on Monday were being held over their alleged involvement in Shiite-led protests in the kingdom, where the Sunni monarchy crushed a February 2011 uprising backed by the Shiite majority, according to lawyers.

Egypt's next president will have to contend with frustrated workers who have threatened a new wave of nationwide strikes if their demands are not met by an already cash-strapped government.

Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the ex-army chief who overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Morsi last July and is hailed by supporters as a tough leader who can restore stability, is widely expected to win next month's election.

Egypt's Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy was traveling to the United States on Wednesday, his ministry said, a day after Washington decided to provide Cairo with 10 Apache military helicopters.

Washington had imposed a temporary freeze on the delivery of major weapons to Egypt, including the Apaches, following the military-installed authorities' brutal crackdown on supporters of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi since his ouster last July.

Egyptian prosecutors submitted Tuesday new evidence including audio tapes against defendants in a trial of Al-Jazeera journalists accused of links with the banned Muslim Brotherhood, although lawyers disputed their quality.

At the trial's last hearing, prosecutors had aired video footage and showed random photographs that were not linked to the case in which the authorities accuse 20 defendants of Brotherhood links.

A senior Cairo-based Hamas official crossed Monday from Egypt into the Gaza Strip ahead of a new attempt to reconcile the militant Islamist movement and its Palestine Liberation Organisation rivals.

Mussa Abu Marzuq, head of external affairs in the movement's political office, was seen entering the Hamas-ruled coastal strip through the Rafah frontier crossing.