Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has told France he is ready to attend a Paris peace conference if Israel accepts talks based on the 1967 borders, an aide told AFP on Sunday.

Nimr Hammad, a political advisor to Abbas, said the president had told French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe that he agreed officially to France's proposal to host a peace conference in Paris before the end of July.

Suspected Al-Qaida militants killed nine Yemeni soldiers in two separate ambush attacks on their convoys in the southern province of Abyan, a military official said on Sunday.

"A military reinforcement convoy coming from (the main southern city of) Aden was ambushed south of (the provincial capital) Zinjibar on Saturday killing six and wounding others," said the official.

Thousands-strong funeral processions filed out of mosques and past closed shops in the central Syrian city of Hama on Saturday, as mourners buried dozens of protesters shot dead by security forces a day before.

A Syrian human rights activist increased Friday's death toll among protesters to 63, up from an initial count of 48. Most of the dead were killed in Hama after troops opened fire on crowds.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague arrived in the Libyan rebel stronghold of Benghazi on Saturday for talks with the opposition's leadership, the Foreign Office said.

Hague, who is accompanied by international development minister Andrew Mitchell, will meet with Mustafa Abdul Jalil, the chief of the rebel National Transitional Council, it said in a statement from London.

Former Egyptian finance minister Youssef Boutros Ghali was on Saturday sentenced to 30 years in prison in absentia on corruption charges, an Agence France Presse correspondent said.

Judge Magdi Ghoneim of the Cairo criminal court sentenced Ghali to 15 years for squandering public money by using cars held in customs and 15 years for abusing his position for personal gain from ministry funds.

Iran's supreme leader called on the ruling conservatives to end their divisions, in a speech on Saturday marking 22 years since the death of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

"In the country there are different political views... Do not deprive someone of security if he does not seek regime change or betrayal, or does not want to carry out enemy orders, but does not share your view," said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Egyptian officials at the Rafah border with the Gaza Strip closed the crossing on Saturday, Palestinian police told Agence France Presse.

Ayub Abu Shaa, head of the Hamas police unit at Rafah, said phone calls to the Egyptian side went unanswered and a crowd of hundreds of Palestinians seeking to cross to Egypt were faced with a locked gate.

Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Mujawar and three other senior Yemeni officials wounded in shelling of the presidential compound were transferred to Saudi Arabia for treatment on Saturday, a medic said.

The condition of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was hospitalized at Sanaa's military hospital after also being wounded in Friday's attack, was "stable" and "of no cause for concern," the medical official told Agence France Presse.

Germany on Saturday ordered the closure of its embassy in Yemen and the rapid repatriation of its staff amid widespread unrest, the foreign ministry said in a statement.

"Even if the fighting in the capital is not directed against foreigners, the dangerous nature of the situation has led the foreign ministry to take this decision," the statement said.

Thousands of youth activists have rallied for the removal of Kuwait's prime minister, pushing the oil-rich Gulf state closer toward political turmoil.

"The people want to topple the prime minister," chanted more than 3,000 protesters who rallied late Friday night for the third straight week, braving temperatures close to 40 degrees Celsius in the desert state.