An Islamist alliance backing Mohammed Morsi on Thursday urged its supporters to protest on November 4 when the ousted president will be put on trial, raising fears of new clashes.

Morsi --held at an unknown location since the military ousted him on July 3 -- and 14 others have been charged in the killing of protesters outside his palace in December 2012.

Seventeen prominent Egyptian rights groups on Thursday criticized a draft bill regulating protests, slamming the "draconian restrictions" they say will stifle freedoms won in the 2011 uprising.

The proposed law, which was drafted by the justice ministry this month and is under review by the cabinet, gives authorities sweeping powers and control over protests and strikes.

Suspected Islamists militants killed a policeman in a drive-by shooting Thursday in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, where troops are battling to contain near daily violence, security officials said.

The attack in the North Sinai provincial capital of El-Arish came a day after militants killed a soldier in the central Sinai, and two days after roadside bombs killed a security force member and a civilian.

Yahoo on Wednesday said that it is closing its Egypt office as part of an effort to restore the faded Internet star to former glory.

"Today, Yahoo announced to employees that we plan to close our Cairo office at the end of this year," spokeswoman Sara Gorman told Agence France Presse in an email.

Opponents of the coup that toppled Egypt's elected president Mohammed Morsi in July warned Wednesday the country was headed towards civil war and urged the international community to pay attention.

"The present regime since the coup is pushing Egypt towards civil war," journalist and former chief editor of the Al-Shorouk newspaper, Wael Kandil, told reporters in Geneva.

Egypt's public prosecutor Wednesday referred a former minister to trial for offering state television equipment to a satellite channel broadcasting demonstrations backing ousted Islamist president Mohammed Morsi, judicial sources said.

Salah Abdel Maqsud, who was information minister under Morsi, and an official from state television, have been referred to trial, the sources said.

Militants killed an Egyptian soldier in Sinai on Wednesday, while security forces made 72 arrests in a sweep of the peninsula to hunt suspects wanted for a bomb attack, officials said.

The soldier was killed in the Tamada area of central Sinai, a medic and a security official said, adding he was shot in the head.

Egypt's public prosecutor referred four policemen to trial over the deaths of 37 Islamist prisoners teargassed in a transport truck in August, the official MENA news agency reported on Tuesday.

It would be the first trial of policemen accused of killings in a massive crackdown on Islamists which followed the army's July 3 ouster of elected president Mohammed Morsi.

Militants set off four roadside bombs targeting a security convoy in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula on Tuesday, killing two people and wounding five, the army said.

The convoy was travelling from Rafah, on the Gaza border, towards the North Sinai provincial capital El-Arish further west, when the bombers struck.

The United States condemned Monday an attack on a Cairo church in which four Coptic Christians were killed, and backed Egyptian calls for those behind the shootings to be brought to justice.

"We strongly condemn the heinous attack on the Al-Adra church in Cairo," State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf said.