Prime Minister Ibrahim Mahlab on Saturday extended his government's apology for a power cut that led to a disruption of the transmission of the Egyptian radio and television.

"The incident will not go unpunished," Mahlab told the state TV, stressing the necessity of fighting negligence in parallel with combating terrorism.

"Negligence is more dangerous than terrorism," he said.

He added that he assigned the prosecutor general to open a probe to identify the reasons behind forcing three TV channels off the air.