A Cairo-bound six-member Hamas delegation has crossed into Egypt via the Rafah border crossing Friday evening for talks with Egyptian mediators to secure a lasting ceasefire in the war-torn Gaza Strip, the state MENA news agency reported.

The delegation from Gaza, led by Hamas' senior official Salah el-Bardawil, would later be joined by another one led by Imad al-Alami and Mohammed Nasr, members of Hamas' politburo exiled in Syria.

The talks, which is slated for Sunday, would address three thorny issues after the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza Wednesday -- formalizing the ceasefire in Gaza in which Hamas places a high priority on opening the border crossings, reaching a prisoner swapdeal and reviving the long-stalled inter-Palestinian reconciliation, it said.

Meanwhile, Nayef Hawatmeh, chief of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, another main Gaza-based faction, will pay a visit to Cairo on Sunday, when he will focus on the inter-Palestinian reconciliation.

Egypt has invited Israel and Hamas to hold separate meetings in Cairo on means of consolidating a ceasefire in the Palestinian enclave.

Earlier on Thursday, Amos Gilad, head of the Diplomatic-Security Bureau of Israeli Defense Ministry, had discussed with Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman on the measures to stop arms smuggling via the tunnel-ridden Egypt-Gaza border.

During his lightning visit to Egypt, according to Israeli dailyHa'aretz, Gilad might have touched on the fate of the kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Shalit was captivated by Hamas-led militants in a cross-border raid in June 2006. Hamas demands Israel pardon more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners from its jails in exchange for Shalit's release.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared Sunday a unilateral ceasefire in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, after a 22-day war which claimed more than 1,300 lives.

Hamas and other Gazan militant groups later echoed that they would stage a one-week ceasefire with Israel, leaving room for further negotiations under the auspices of Egypt.