Egyptian authorities have confiscated trucks carrying explosive warheads and a variety of small arms ammunition smuggled from Libya, the country's interior minister Ahmed Gamal Eddin said.

At a news conference in Cairo Egypt's Interior Minister said that the authorities spent weeks in the desert investigating the operation before they finally seized the pickup trucks that were carrying 108 warheads for Soviet-designed Grad rockets, near Marsa Matrouh, 430 kilometers northwest of Cairo on the Mediterranean coast. He added that suspected smugglers had fled the scene.

Meanwhile, in Egypt's troubled northern Sinai region, troops from a 12-nation observer force fired on protesters demonstrating outside their base against the Israeli offensive in Gaza. The multinational force is part of the peace treaty signed by Egypt and Israel in 1979. American troops make up the largest contingent of the 1,650-strong force.

Libya's revolution last year unleashed a flood of small arms and heavy weapons into circulation through the vast Sahara desert of North Africa. Military experts have been reported saying that weapons that cross Libya's porous borders with neighbouring Egypt and Sudan could be falling into the hands of Islamic militants.