Sectarian violence that erupted overnight north of Cairo killed five people, including four Christians, and left six other people wounded, an Egyptian security source said on Saturday.

The clashes, which saw the use of firearms, flared on Friday night in Al-Khusus, a poor area in Qalyubia governorate, after a Muslim in his 50s objected to children drawing a swastika on a religious institute, the source told Agence France Presse.

An Egyptian court threw out on Saturday a lawsuit demanding a popular satirist's show that has mocked Islamist President Mohamed Morsi be taken off the air and its broadcaster shut down, a judicial source said.

An Islamist lawyer had accused controversial political comedian Bassem Youssef of being disrespectful to the audience and to the president and insulting state symbols and Egyptian values with "sexual innuendo."

Egyptian Islamist protesters threw stones at the house of Iran's envoy in Cairo on Friday and tried to scale the villa's walls but were blocked by police, a police official said.

The Islamists, who object to a thaw in relations between Egypt and Iran, were also prevented by police from raising the flag adopted by Syrian rebels against Tehran's close ally President Bashar Assad over the envoy's house.

Egypt's President Mohamed Morsi said during his first visit to Sudan on Friday that cooperation between the Islamist regimes in Cairo and Khartoum does not pose any threat and yet they both face "enemies".

"We in Egypt and Sudan are integrated, and you will find enemies for this integration," Morsi stressed before thousands of people, including his Sudanese counterpart President Omar al-Bashir, at al-Noor mosque in Khartoum North.

The "revolutionary" regime of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi should foster tighter ties between its people and those of neighboring Sudan, veteran Islamist Hassan al-Turabi said on Friday.

Speaking after he and other political party figures met the visiting Islamist leader, Turabi said grassroots links must be developed because Morsi's regime "is a popular government elected by the people."

Israel's government on Friday strenuously denied it had any link to an arms-laden ship that Egypt said its navy seized as it sailed from the Israeli port of Eilat to Togo in West Africa.

"Nobody in Israel knows anything about this ship. It's clear that it did not come from Eilat or any other Israeli port," foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told Agence France Presse.

Egypt's navy on Thursday seized a weapons-laden ship and detained its crew who had set off from the Israeli port of Eilat en route to the African country of Togo, security officials said.

Officials the ship, "which was flying the flag of an African country," was intercepted after it strayed into Egyptian territorial waters.

Direct road links between Egypt and Sudan will open soon, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi said on Thursday, beginning a two-day visit which Khartoum has called "historic".

Morsi's first trip to the neighboring country, which Egypt jointly ruled with Britain until 1956, comes nearly a year after his election.

Egypt summoned on Wednesday the United Arab Emirates charge d'affaires to urge a quick conclusion to an investigation into detained Egyptians suspected of links to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The foreign ministry said it also demanded that relatives of the detained Egyptians be allowed to visit them.

A delegation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) arrived in Cairo on Wednesday for talks on a financing program needed to lift Egypt's economy out of crisis.

The delegation is expected to examine Egypt's efforts at economic reform.