Cairo - Palestinian militant groups on Thursday said they plan to respond in kind to recent Israeli military strikes within the Gaza Strip.

"These strikes represent an escalating offensive of the Zionists that targets the Palestinian people. This reflects that the enemy has no interest in peace in the region," Fawzi Barhoum, Hamas spokesman in the Gaza Strip, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

"The military branch of Hamas has a right to respond to the strikes. The leaders of our military branch are devising that response now," Barhoum said.

Cairo - Egyptian President Hosny Mubarak met Wednesday US President Barack Obama's envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, for talks on ways to secure a lasting ceasefire between the Palestinians and Israel, with the US envoy praising Cairo's efforts.

Mitchell arrived in Cairo on Tuesday at the beginning of a tour of the region. After Egypt he is to travel on to Israel and to the West Bank for talks with leaders there.

He and Mubarak also discussed the Egyptian initiative aimed at restoring relative calm between Israel and the Palestinians and the re-opening of Gaza's border points.

Tehran - Tehran summoned the head of the Egyptian interest section to protest what it said was Cairo's obstruction in getting Iranian aid to the Gaza Strip, the official news agency IRNA reported Tuesday.

An Iranian foreign ministry official said Cairo has still not issued the necessary permission for an Iranian ship carrying aid for Gaza to anchor in Egypt.

Tehran reportedly told the Egyptian envoy that while the blocking of the Iranian aid ship by Israel was predictable, Egypt's rejection was "not justifiable at all."

Cairo - European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana on Tuesday met with Egyptian President Hosny Mubarak in Cairo for talks on the situation in the Gaza Strip.

The two discussed efforts to consolidate a lasting ceasefire, opening Gaza's borders to facilitate humanitarian aid for Palestinians, and Egypt's efforts to reconcile rival Palestinian factions.

Solana's visit, which started Monday night, was part of a two-day Middle East tour which would also take him to Jordan, the Palestinian territories and Israel.

Cairo - Egyptians from across the political spectrum say they are greeting news of US special envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell's planned arrival in Cairo on Tuesday evening with a mixture of skepticism and surprise.

Few here or indeed across the Arab world expected US President Barack Obama to make the Israeli-Palestinian conflict one of his first foreign policy priorities. But fewer still expect any real change in US policy on the issue.

Cairo, Jan 26: Recent discoveries by a Polish archaeological mission in the Nile delta have revealed that far from being hostile regions as previously supposed, Upper and Lower Egypt were politically and culturally united in pre-dynastic times.

According to a report in Al-Ahram Weekly, the findings were made by the archaeological mission at Tel Al-Farkha in the north-eastern Delta about 120 kilometers north-east of Cairo.