An al-Qaida-inspired group operating in the Sinai Peninsula claimed Monday a car bombing outside a military building in Egypt's Suez Canal city of Ismailiya which wounded six soldiers.

The attack on Saturday destroyed part of the military compound's wall and set fire to several cars in the area. A second car bomb was also found in the area but it was defused.

Police were hunting Monday for those behind a shooting spree at a church wedding that killed four people, in the first attack targeting Christians in Cairo since the ouster of Egypt's Islamist president.

An eight-year-old girl was among those shot dead at the Church of the Virgin in Cairo's working class neighborhood of Al-Warrak, while 17 others were wounded in the late Sunday attack, officials said.

Dozens of Egyptian truck drivers were freed on Sunday after being abducted by a Libyan armed group pressing for the release of Libyans detained in Egypt, a security source said.

"The drivers who were held by armed men in Ajdabiya (in eastern Libya) were released by their captors," the source told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.

Egyptian police fired teargas at Islamist students who pelted them with rocks during an anti-army protest in Cairo's Al-Azhar university on Sunday, an Agence France Presse reporter and the interior ministry said.

About 3,000 students initially blocked the main Nasr road leading to the Islamic university's campus, and clashed with police who arrived to persuade them to leave, the ministry said in a statement.

A boatload of 254 Syrian and Egyptian migrants including 94 minors landed in Italy on Sunday after a perilous voyage through rough seas from Egypt that skirted Greece and Malta to reach Italy.

The migrants were rescued some 150 nautical miles southeast of Sicily and were transferred onto three coast guard patrol boats that arrived in the port of Syracuse in the early hours of Sunday.

U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said "intense efforts" were under way to convene Syrian peace talks, as he met with Egyptian officials Saturday at the start of a regional tour.

The international pointman for efforts to end Syria's nearly three-year civil war aims to garner regional support for a peace conference that world powers hope to convene in Geneva next month.

Egypt is in talks with Libya to secure the release of more than 20 Egyptian drivers seized by militias in the neighboring country, the foreign ministry said Saturday.

Egyptian Ambassador Mohammed Abu Bakr is in "intense contacts with Libyan authorities and several local chieftains to secure the release of Egyptian drivers kidnapped by armed men" in the eastern city of Ajdabiya, ministry spokesman Badr Abdelatty said in remarks on the government's website.

The Gaza Strip's Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh denied on Saturday reports that the Islamic militant group was involved in fighting in the neighboring Egyptian Sinai or in Syria.

"We did not interfere in the affairs of any country and are not involved in the events or differences or internal conflicts of any country," Haniyeh said.

A car bomb exploded outside a military intelligence building in Egypt's Suez Canal city of Ismailiya on Saturday, wounding four people, security officials said.

The blast destroyed part of the military compound's wall and set fire to several cars in the area.

The U.N. special envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, will on Saturday visit Egypt as he kicks off a regional tour to prepare for peace talks on Syria dubbed Geneva 2, his spokesman said.

Brahimi will meet Egypt's foreign minister Nabil Fahmy as well as the Arab League Secretary General Nabil al-Arabi, spokesman Khawla Mattar said in Geneva on Friday.