A team of experts dispatched by U.N.-Arab League special envoy Kofi Annan has arrived in Syria, where it will remain as long as progress is made on a monitoring operation to end the bloodshed, a spokesman said Monday.

"The mission has arrived. There are five people with expertise in political, peacekeeping and mediation," Ahmed Fawzi, spokesman for Annan told Agence France Presse.

Tens of thousands of loyalists of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr rallied in south Iraq Monday decrying poor services and rampant graft on the ninth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion against Saddam Hussein.

Protesters flooded the center of the southern port city of Basra for the rally, with demonstrators waving Iraqi flags and portraits of the anti-U.S. Shiite cleric and his father, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, killed in 1999 by assailants thought to have been sent by Saddam.

A powerful sandstorm blowing over the Gulf has disrupted air traffic in Yemen, and closed schools and sent hundreds of people to hospital with respiratory problems in Saudi Arabia.

The Saudi ministry of education announced on Monday the closure of schools in the north, east and south-west of the desert kingdom, a day after similar measures were taken in the capital Riyadh, the official SPA news agency reported.

Two more generals have fled Syria and linked up with rebels trying to overthrow President Bashar Assad's regime in Damascus, a Turkish diplomat said on Monday.

The latest defections mean a total of nine generals have deserted since the revolt against Assad's rule erupted a year ago, many of them seeking refuge in neighboring Turkey.

NATO must investigate the killing of dozens of civilians during its air campaign in Libya last year and provide reparations to the people affected, Amnesty International said on Monday.

"Adequate investigations must be carried out and full reparation provided to victims and their families," said the rights group in a statement released one year after the first strike sorties were carried out by the alliance in Libya.

Syria’s first lady Asma Assad told a friend that she was the “real dictator” in the family, according to leaked emails, Britain’s Daily Telegraph reported Monday.

Her correspondence with President Bashar Assad, his aides, friends and family portray her as highly supportive of her husband, the daily added.

Israel is using the Gaza Strip as a testing ground for a possible military strike on its arch foe Iran, the head of the radical Palestinian movement Hamas said on Monday.

"Israel is warming up the region for a possible war against Iran," Khaled Meshaal said in an interview with Turkey's Anatolia news agency.

Three "terrorists" and a member of Syria's security forces were killed in a clash in a district of Damascus on Monday, state television said.

"Three terrorists were killed and a fourth was arrested in the fighting between security forces and an armed terrorist gang sheltered in a house of a residential district," it said.

Libya's interim authorities now control all ports of entry to the country's third city of Misrata, a government official said on Sunday.

"All the ports were handed over," including the airport, said Ziyad Abdelali of the interior ministry.

Technical experts from the U.N. and Organization of Islamic Cooperation are in Syria on a mission to assess the humanitarian impact of its year-long bloodshed, a senior OIC official said on Sunday.

"The joint OIC-U.N. mission entered Syria on Friday to carry out an evaluation of humanitarian aid," on a mission led by the Syrian government, its assistant secretary general, Atta al-Mannan Bakhit, told Agence France Presse.