Egyptian editor Islam Afifi, who is facing charges of spreading false news and was remanded in custody Thursday, will be freed following a presidential decree scrapping preventive detention in the case of publishing crimes.

"Al-Dustour chief editor Islam Afifi will be released according to the (presidential) decree," which scraps preventive detention in the case of publishing crimes, said Yasser Ali, spokesman of President Mohammed Morsi.

Egypt is searching for 120 wanted militants and believes around 1,600 extremists are hiding out in the Sinai, where militants have attacked soldiers and police, the official news agency MENA reported on Wednesday.

The military sent in tanks and soldiers into the lawless peninsula which neighbors Israel and Gaza after gunmen killed 16 soldiers in an attack on an army outpost on August 5.

Egyptian police arrested a man who threw two soda cans packed with gun powder at the German embassy on Wednesday, security officials said.

One of the two cans exploded inside the embassy's grounds, the officials said, adding that the 54-year-old man then threw a third can that did not explode at a policeman who was chasing him.

Egypt's interior ministry on Wednesday warned organizers planning a campaign of protests against President Mohammed Morsi on August 24 that it would respond "decisively" to any violence.

The protest leaders insist their campaign will be peaceful but Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood movement accuses them of coordinating with former regime figures to try to unseat the Islamist president.

Egypt's President Mohammed Morsi, the country's first civilian and Islamist head of state, will visit the United States on September 23, state media reported on Wednesday.

The official MENA news agency quoted Morsi's spokesman Yassir Ali as saying the president will attend a United Nations General Assembly session in New York and then head to Washington to meet "senior officials" during a three-day trip.

Iran and Egypt are moving towards restoring diplomatic relations which were severed more than three decades ago, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said in an interview published on Tuesday.

Salehi said in comments reported in Egypt's state-run Al-Ahram newspaper that Tehran was keen on establishing relations of "friendship and brotherhood" with Cairo.

The authorities in Egypt are urging tribal leaders to support a security campaign in the Sinai Peninsula where an attack on August 5 killed 16 border guards, media reports said on Tuesday.

The defense minister, General Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, asked tribal leaders who gathered on Monday in el-Arish in the north of the peninsula to "support the security forces and the campaign" in the area, government daily al-Ahram said.

French President Francois Hollande was due later Monday to meet with the new United Nations peace envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, Hollande's office said.

Brahimi, a veteran diplomat troubleshooter, was named on Friday to take over from Kofi Annan after Annan quit because of the lack of international support for his peace plan.

The Israeli army has deployed an Iron Dome air defense system, designed to intercept and destroy rockets, days after two rockets were fired at the town of Eilat near the border with Egypt, a military spokeswoman said Monday.

"An Iron Dome battery has been deployed in the town of Eilat as part of tests, momentarily modifying the sites where these systems are deployed," she said but did not give further details.

President Mohammed Morsi plans to attend a summit in Iran this month, state media reported on Saturday, on the first such visit since Egypt severed ties with Tehran more than three decades ago.

The official MENA news agency quoted a source in the presidency as saying Morsi will attend the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Tehran on August 30-31 at which Egypt will transfer the bloc's rotating leadership to Iran.