An Egyptian court on Sunday acquitted 12 activists opposed to ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi of charges they incited violence against members of his Muslim Brotherhood, a judicial source said.

Among those cleared of the allegations were prominent bloggers Ahmed Douma, who had been released on Saturday ahead the verdict, and Alaa Abdelfattah and Nawara Nagm, the source told Agence France Presse.

Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei called for the Muslim Brotherhood to be included in Egypt's political future, in a media interview conducted before his candidacy as interim premier hit opposition.

ElBaradei told German news weekly Der Spiegel in remarks published Sunday that members of the Muslim Brotherhood camp of ousted president Mohamed Morsi should not be treated as criminals.

Egyptian security officials said Sunday that suspected Islamic militants have bombed a natural gas pipeline to Jordan south of the city of el-Arish in the Sinai Peninsula.

The attacks early Sunday on two points on the pipeline started fires that were soon put out, but the flow of gas was disrupted, said the officials.

Influential Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi on Saturday issued a religious decree, or fatwa, urging Egyptians to support overthrown Islamist president Mohammed Morsi who was toppled by the army on Wednesday.

"Their every action is invalid," Qaradawi said of "those who have overthrown the president, suspended the constitution and imposed another president and constitution" on Egypt.

Republican Senator John McCain called for a suspension of U.S. military aid to Egypt after the army ouster of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi, breaking with the official position in Washington.

"I've thought long and hard about this, but I believe that we have to suspend the aid to the Egyptian military, because the Egyptian military has overturned the vote of the people of Egypt," McCain said Friday evening at a press conference in his home state of Arizona.

Nobel Peace laureate Mohammed ElBaradei was chosen Saturday as premier to help lead Egypt out of a deepening crisis, sources said, after bloodshed followed the ouster of the country's first freely elected president.

The Tamarod movement, which engineered mass protests culminating in the overthrow of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi on Wednesday, made the announcement after talks with Egypt's new interim leader.

Thousands of supporters of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood paid their respects on Saturday to four members of the movement killed in 24 hours of clashes during protests against the ouster of their president.

Violence linked to the political crisis has cost the lives of at least 37 people and injured more than 1,400 across the deeply divided North African nation, official sources say.

Residents of Cairo's Manial neighborhood were recovering Saturday from a bloody night of clashes with armed supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood who killed at least seven people and left dozens injured, they told Agence France Presse.

The violence erupted when residents tried to stop hundreds of Islamists passing through Manial to reach protests being staged in the iconic Tahrir Square against toppled president Mohammed Morsi, who hails from the Muslim Brotherhood.

Lawyers for Egypt's ex-President Hosni Mubarak entered a not guilty plea when his retrial for alleged complicity in the killings of protesters in 2011 resumed on Saturday.

The hearing comes coincidentally just three days after Mubarak's successor Mohamed Morsi was himself toppled and amid turmoil on the streets pitting Islamists against anti-Morsi protesters.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea noted that the Egyptian people were right in adopting democracy last year because it helped lead to the overthrow of the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood, reported the daily An Nahar Saturday.

He predicted: “The democratic change in Egypt will spread to the rest of the Arab world and even Turkey.”