The Palestinian Authority has condemned the network of smuggling tunnels between Hamas-run Gaza and Egypt as a "threat" to security and lauded Cairo's campaign to seal them.

Speaking a week after a deadly attack which killed 16 Egyptian border police in northern Sinai, Tayeb Abdelrahim, chief of staff to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, expressed full support for Egyptian moves.

Egypt has asked Gaza's Hamas rulers for information on three members of an Islamist group suspected of involvement in a deadly attack on a military outpost, a senior security official said on Saturday.

He said Egyptian authorities had received a list of nine suspects from Israel, and asked the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas to provide information on three of the men.

An Israeli court on Tuesday backed an Israeli government policy of allowing Christians from the Gaza Strip to pray at Israeli and West Bank holy sites, and denying the enclave's Muslims the same right.

The Supreme Court rejected an appeal lodged by six Gaza Muslims and Israeli non-governmental organization Gisha to challenge a ruling of the Beersheba District Court, which refused to intervene against the policy.

Egypt's army vowed Monday to "avenge" the killing of 16 troops by gunmen near the Israeli border, as President Mohammed Morsi ordered security forces to take full control of the Sinai Peninsula.

In Sunday's attack, 35 gunmen in Bedouin clothing opened fire on the troops before crossing into the Jewish state in an armored vehicle, Egyptian officials said. Israel said five gunmen were killed on its side.

A militant with the armed wing of Gaza's ruling Hamas movement died in Gaza City on Wednesday after the car he was travelling in exploded, Palestinian medical sources said.

There was no accusation against Israel, prompting suspicions it was a "work accident" -- the euphemism for the accidental detonation of explosives held by militants.

The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas ruling Gaza said on Saturday it would free more than 150 prisoners "as a gift" for the holy month of Ramadan.

The Hamas government "was releasing 159 inmates ... on the occasion of the holy month of Ramadan and as a gift" from its head, Ismail Haniya, a statement quoted interior ministry official Islam Shahwan as saying.

The Hamas government in Gaza executed three men convicted of murder on Tuesday morning, the interior ministry said.

"Based on religious law and our religion and what is stipulated in Palestinian law... three men convicted of intentional murder were executed on Tuesday morning in accordance with a court order sentencing them to death by hanging after their conviction," the Hamas interior ministry said in a statement.

A group of Palestinians gathered on Monday to cross from Gaza and visit relatives in Israeli prisons for the first time in five years.

The visits were banned in June 2007, leaving the families of hundreds of Gazans held in Israeli jails unable to see their sons, husbands and fathers.

A Palestinian militant from the ruling Hamas movement was killed and two others wounded on Thursday in an Israeli air strike on eastern Gaza City, medics said.

The attack targeted a training ground used by Hamas' armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, in the southeastern Zeitoun neighborhood of the city, they said.

Hamas' prime minister in the Gaza Strip Ismail Haniya called on Egypt on Wednesday to keep the Rafah border crossing open around the clock.

At a ceremony to inaugurate a new hall at the border crossing, Haniya urged the Egyptians "to open the door of the Rafah crossing wider by allowing it to work around the clock and increasing the number of travelers."