Mourners in Egypt attended a memorial service Tuesday for victims of a Coptic church fire in Cairo that killed 41 people -- among them many children, including twins and triplets.

The electrical fire on Sunday ripped through the Abu Sifin church in Imbaba, a working class district west of the Nile River, part of Giza governorate in greater Cairo.

At least 10 of those killed during Sunday mass, when families flock to the church and its daycare services, were minors aged under 16, according to a list from just one hospital circulated by local media.

Iraq's firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr backtracked Tuesday after earlier urging his supporters to join a massive rally as a standoff with his political rivals appeared to be getting worse.

The populist cleric's announcement came amid behind the scenes talks aimed at steering Iraq out of crisis, with the country's two branches of Shiite Islam jockeying for supremacy.

More than 10 months on from elections, Iraq still has no government, new prime minister or new president, because of disagreement between factions over forming a coalition.

The European Union and United States said Tuesday they were studying Iran's response to a "final" draft agreement on reviving a 2015 nuclear accord with major powers the EU presented at talks in Vienna.

The US had already said Monday that it was informing EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell of its response to the text he submitted on August 8.

The European Union said Tuesday it was studying Iran's response to a "final" draft agreement on reviving a 2015 nuclear accord with major powers it presented at talks in Vienna.

The United States had already said Monday that it was informing EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell of its response to the text he submitted on August 8.

Israel's army said Monday it had discovered and blocked a tunnel leading out of the Gaza Strip that had been dug by the Palestinian enclave's Hamas rulers.

Israel says the militant group aims to use so-called attack tunnels to infiltrate fighters and abduct Israeli soldiers or civilians as bargaining chips in prisoner exchanges.

The Israeli military said it had identified the tunnel "with two routes belonging to the Hamas terrorist organisation, dug from the northern Gaza Strip".

More than a week since Israeli air strikes smashed into a Gaza Strip highrise, local resident Said Bessia pointed to a hole punched through concrete where a missile killed an Islamic Jihad commander.

"This is where he was sitting," Bessia said, referring to Tayseer al-Jabari, who was meeting several top militants on the sixth floor of the Palestine Tower building.

The August 5 strikes were among the first of a three-day bombardment of the densely populated Palestinian enclave which, even the militants acknowledged, dealt a blow to their leadership.

Iran on Monday denied any link with the attacker of British author Salman Rushdie but blamed the writer himself for "insulting" Islam in the novel "The Satanic Verses".

"We categorically deny" any link with the attack and "no one has the right to accuse the Islamic Republic of Iran", said foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani in Tehran's first official reaction to Friday's stabbing.

"In this attack, we do not consider anyone other than Salman Rushdie and his supporters worthy of blame and even condemnation," he said.

A French-Iranian academic held in Iran for the past three years in a case that has raised tensions between Tehran and Paris has returned to prison after a brief furlough, her supporters said.

Fariba Adelkhah was last week allowed to leave Tehran's Evin prison for five days.

Hopes that the measure may be extended were not fulfilled, her support group said in a statement published late Sunday.

"Unfortunately, Fariba's five-day leave was not extended, or transformed into house arrest," it said. "It gave her a break, but it's still bad news."

Egyptians voiced outrage Monday over reports that firefighters and paramedics took over an hour to respond to a blaze that tore through a Coptic Christian church and killed 41 people.

Grief has spread over Sunday's fire among Copts, the Middle East's largest Christian community, which makes up at least 10 million of Muslim-majority Egypt's population of 103 million.

But many other Egyptians have also voiced outrage over the disaster in the now scorched Abu Sifin church, located in the greater Cairo neighbourhood of Imbaba west of the Nile River.

Israeli security forces shot dead a Palestinian man they said had tried to stab an officer during a home raid searching for weapons in east Jerusalem early Monday.

The man, identified by Palestinians as Mohammed al-Shaham, 21, was "neutralised" and died in an Israeli military hospital, police said.

The man's father, Ibrahim al-Shaham, told AFP that his son was shot in the head at point-blank range and was left bleeding for 40 minutes.