At least seven civilians and a soldier were killed late Sunday when three rockets slammed into the restive Sinai Peninsula, Egypt's interior ministry and medical sources said.

One rocket fell outside a shop in the south of El-Arish, capital of north Sinai, killing the seven civilians, including a child, and injuring 25 other people, the ministry said.

An Egyptian court Sunday sentenced 101 supporters of ousted Islamist president Mohammed Morsi to three years in jail for acts of violence in the Nile Delta city of Damietta, state media reported.

Egyptian courts have sparked international concern over a spate of mass trials of Morsi's supporters, with rights groups repeatedly accusing the authorities of using the judiciary as a tool of repression.

Three small bombs exploded on Sunday in a western Cairo suburb, targeting an electricity transmission pylon and cutting power to the area for nearly an hour, a security official said.

Militants have stepped up attacks in Egypt, mostly against the security forces, since the army ousted Islamist president Mohammed Morsi in July 2013 and the new authorities launched a deadly crackdown on his supporters.

An Egyptian appeals court on Sunday overturned a one-year jail sentence against deposed Islamist president Mohammed Morsi's former prime minister Hisham Qandil, his lawyer told Agence France Presse.

Qandil, seen as a moderate and who was involved in failed talks with the military after Morsi's overthrow in July last year, was arrested in December while trying to flee the country.

Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi warned Saturday that escalating the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza would cost more "innocent lives," as the death toll climbed to 127 Palestinians.

Sisi's spokesman said the government was in touch with both sides after the president met Mideast Quartet envoy Tony Blair in Cairo.

Egyptian police said Saturday they have arrested a driver for raping a Russian tourist in a resort town, as the government cracks down on an epidemic of sexual harassment and violence.

Police said the mini-bus driver raped the woman after pretending the vehicle had broken down, to trick her husband into getting off before speeding off with his intended victim.

Two people were shot dead in clashes in Cairo on Friday as supporters of deposed Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi staged protests after weekly Muslim prayers, officials told Agence France Presse.

Since the army ousted Morsi in July last year, a government crackdown on his supporters has killed more than 1,400 people and jailed upwards of 15,000, and about 200 have been sentenced to death in speedy mass trials.

Egypt said Friday its efforts to halt violence in the Gaza Strip have met with "stubbornness", as it appealed to the international community to intervene to end the deadly conflict.

Israel's aerial military campaign targeting rocket-firing militants in Gaza has killed at least 100 Palestinians and wounded more than 500 since it began early Tuesday.

Egypt's security forces seized 20 Grad rockets being smuggled in from the Gaza Strip through a tunnel by militants in northern Sinai, security officials said Friday.

The rockets, along with their launch pads, were seized late Thursday after a firefight between security forces and militants in the town of Rafah bordering the Palestinian enclave, they said.

Squeezed in between auto parts shops and cafes off the crowded avenues of downtown Cairo, no blaring marquee announces this cinema. Instead look for a small blue doorway, marked by a discrete neon calligraphy sign and sometimes an old Peugeot parked across the street playing films projected onto its windshield.

The car once belonged to the late Youssef Chahine, Egypt's most lauded movie director, who in a career that spanned six decades made films with a social conscience that challenged censors and broke with the dominant big-studio system.