Al-Arish, Egypt - Egyptian security forces discovered half a ton of explosives not far from Egypt's border with the Gaza Strip, police said Monday.

Police found more than 500 kilos of TNT, along with light weapons and remnants from the peninsula's past wars in the dunes less than 40 kilometres from Egypt's border with the Gaza Strip at Rafah, a source in Egypt's security forces told German Press Agency dpa on condition of anonymity.

Cairo  - Nine paintings stolen ten days ago from an Egyptian museum, were found near the scene of the crime, the Egyptian Ministry of Culture said on Thursday.

"Security authorities informed me that they found the paintings near the palace after the police received an anonymous phone call telling them where the paintings were," Egypt's Minister of Culture Farouq Hosni said.

The paintings were stolen from Mohammed Ali Pasha's palace, a historical building that houses major art works.

The identity of the thieves remains unknown.

Cairo - Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden called on Somali militants to topple the new president Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and to continue fighting "infidels," according to a new audio tape carried by Islamist web sites on Thursday.

The tape, entitled "Fight on, champions of Somalia" and dedicated to "my patient, persevering Muslim brothers in Mujahid Somalia" is produced by al-Qaeda's al-Sahab media-production house. The audio was released as a video showing a still photo of Bin Laden and English subtitles.

Cairo - The Egyptian ambassador to Israel has no plans to boycott celebrations marking the 30th anniversary of the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel, a spokesman for the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said Thursday, contradicting Israeli press reports.

"We don't have any information suggesting that the ambassador to Israel will boycott the celebrations. Why should he?" Hossam Zaki, a spokesman for the Egyptian Foreign Ministry in Cairo, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa on Thursday.

Cairo/Gaza City  - Egypt on Wednesday opened the Rafah border crossing for two days to allow Palestinians stranded on both sides of the border to cross, Gaza's Interior Ministry and Egypt's official MENA news agency reported.

Trucks carrying humanitarian supplies and more than 100 Palestinians that had been stranded in Egypt crossed into the Palestinian enclave via the Rafah crossing, MENA reported.