Gunmen opened fire opened fire Tuesday on a hotel in the Egyptian resort of Taba bordering Israel, prompting Israeli tourists to flee, but there were no casualties, security sources said.

The attack was apparently a botched attempt to rob a jewelry store in the hotel, the sources said.

The Israeli parliament passed tough new legislation targeting illegal immigration early on Tuesday, giving authorities powers to detain migrants for up to three years without charge.

The legislation, an amendment to a 1954 law originally intended to deal with Arab militants trying to infiltrate the Jewish state, was passed by 37 votes to eight.

Egyptian telecom magnate Naguib Sawiris faces trial for insulting religion after tweeting a caricature of Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse in Islamic garb, an Islamist lawyer who filed a legal complaint against him said Monday.

The court will hear the case against Sawiris, a billionaire Coptic Christian who founded the liberal Free Egyptians party, on January 14, said the lawyer Mamdouh Ismail, a member of the ultra-conservative Al-Gamaa al-Islamiya group.

Russia on Saturday said it was concerned after Egyptian prosecutors demanded a death sentence for fallen dictator Hosni Mubarak, calling for humanitarian factors to be considered.

"Such announcements are heard in Moscow with concern," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Former Egyptian prime minister and presidential hopeful Ahmed Shafiq was forced to flee a campaign rally after protesters threw chairs at him and demanded he leave the area, according to reports on Friday.

Shafiq, who has announced he was running for the top job, was addressing a rally in the impoverished Cairo neighborhood of Imbaba on Thursday evening when some residents began chanting for him to leave.

Former prime minister Saad Hariri on Friday denied what he said was a “rumor” of a failed attempt on his life in the Saudi capital Riyadh.

“You might have heard the rumor about my so-called assassination in Riyadh. My presence here, now, is a natural denial of this lie,” Hariri said in English on the social networking website Twitter.

A prosecutor in Hosni Mubarak's trial on Thursday demanded the death sentence for him and his former security chief, saying the fallen Egyptian president had ordered the killings of anti-regime demonstrators.

"The law foresees the death penalty for premeditated murder," prosecutor Mustafa Khater told the court during the trial of the former president, who was toppled in a popular uprising in February.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat stated on Tuesday that history has proven that popular movements cannot slow down, but they only gain momentum.

He said citing late Czechoslovakian President Vaclav Havel: “If only Russia and Iran would consider the ‘power of the powerless’ in their approach towards the Syrian crisis.”

Egyptians were voting on Tuesday in the final round of a landmark post-revolution election that has propelled Islamist movements into the center stage of politics.

Around 15 million eligible voters have their chance to cast ballots for the first parliament since an uprising overthrew veteran president Hosni Mubarak last February.

The judge in the murder and corruption trial of Egypt's ex-president Hosni Mubarak adjourned the hearing on Monday to the next day to hear the prosecution's arguments.

The fallen dictator was wheeled into court on a stretcher as his trial for the deaths of protesters during the uprising that ousted him in February.