South African President Jacob Zuma arrived on Monday in Libya for talks on ending the conflict as NATO said Moammer Gadhafi's "reign of terror" was nearing its end and top military officers deserted him.

In Rome, eight generals announced they had defected from Gadhafi's forces -- and also said the regime's army was now at 20-percent capacity.

Forces loyal to Yemen's embattled president killed 20 protesters as they crushed a sit-in in Taez, an organizer said on Monday, as suspected al-Qaida gunmen killed six soldiers in the south.

Security service agents backed by army and Republican Guards stormed the protest against President Ali Abdullah Saleh in the city's Freedom Square, shooting at demonstrators and setting fire to their tents, protesters said.

At least 15 people were killed in a Syrian crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, activists said Monday, as the U.N. condemned the "shocking" brutality of President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

Dozens of tanks for a second straight day circled towns and villages in the Homs area, north of Damascus.

The Egyptian government is having difficulty exerting full control over the Sinai Peninsula, allowing terror groups to flourish there, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday.

Netanyahu, who was addressing the Israeli parliament's foreign affairs and defense committee, also said that changes in the region had seen the Hamas movement begin to shift its activities from its headquarters in Syria to Egypt.

U.N. rights Chief Navi Pillay on Monday slammed the brutality of crackdowns on protestors by government forces in Libya and Syria, saying the actions were shocking in their disregard for human rights.

"The brutality and magnitude of measures taken by the governments in Libya and now Syria have been particularly shocking in their outright disregard for basic human rights," Pillay told the U.N. Human Rights Council.

The United States will ask the U.N. atomic watchdog to report Syria to the U.N. Security Council over its alleged illicit nuclear activity, according to a draft resolution obtained by Agence France Presse on Monday.

At a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors next week, Washington will urge member states to report Syria to the Security Council, despite an apparent pledge by Damascus to break a three-and-a-half-year silence over its alleged nuclear ambitions.

Israeli soldiers clashed overnight with Jewish worshipers who tried to enter a religious site in the northern West Bank city of Nablus without permission, the military said on Monday.

The disturbances erupted when scores of religious Jews attempted to visit Joseph's Tomb without authorization shortly after hundreds of others had traveled there on an army-escorted tour.

Iran's top trade official has denied that a public company in Iran, which does not recognize the Jewish state, bought a ship from an Israeli firm as claimed by Washington, local media said on Sunday.

"Based on the laws of the country, any kind of trade or economic transaction with the Zionist regime and its affiliated firms is against the law," the chairman of Iran's Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Mines (ICCIM), Mohammad Nahavandian, was quoted as saying.

Egypt will expel an Iranian diplomat who was briefly detained on suspicion of spying on the North African country for Tehran's intelligence services, security officials said on Sunday.

The officials said the diplomat, who had been released earlier in the day, would be "expelled within 48 hours."

Suspected al-Qaida gunmen have taken control of the south Yemen city of Zinjibar, capital of Abyan province, after heavy fighting with security forces that left 16 dead, an official said on Sunday.

The fighters "were able to gain control of the city of Zinjibar ... and took over all government facilities," except for the headquarters of the 25th mechanized brigade, which is besieged by militants, the security official said.