Shiite pilgrims from across Iraq and around the world thronged the shrine city of Karbala on Thursday for the climax of annual mourning rituals amid tight security over fears of militant attacks.

An Agence France Presse correspondent said massive crowds of people flooded the streets of the city, which officials say has seen millions of visitors in the run-up to the Arbaeen commemorations, as sad songs blared from loudspeakers.

Furious combat raged around the main airport and a military airbase in northern Syria on Thursday, a day after the United Nations gave a staggering toll of 60,000 dead in the 21-month civil war.

Insurgents besieged troops on the perimeter of Aleppo's international airport and around Taftanaz airbase in Idlib province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Egypt sent a top official to the UAE for talks on Wednesday, a day after reports that 10 members of a group linked to President Mohamed Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood party were arrested there.

Essam el-Haddad, Morsi's adviser for foreign affairs and international cooperation, held talks with UAE Vice President and Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashed al-Maktoum, WAM state news agency said.

The United States Wednesday urged Israeli and Palestinian leaders to resume direct talks in 2013 and move toward peace.

"As we turn the calendar to 2013... now is the time for leaders on both sides to display real leadership, to focus on the work that's necessary to return to direct negotiations," said State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.

Two Libyans were killed on Wednesday when fighting erupted between rival tribes in the southern oasis of Sabha, a local official told AFP.

"Two people were killed in clashes today," said Ayub al-Zarroug, president of the local council of Sabha, 750 kilometers (465 miles) south of Tripoli.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said on Wednesday that the final section of a security fence along the border with Egypt's barren Sinai should be finished by the end of March.

Netanyahu on Wednesday attended a ceremony marking the completion of 230 kilometers (144 miles) of the barrier, with just over seven miles still to go, in the vicinity of the Red Sea resort of Eilat.

The Palestinian government in the West Bank on Wednesday urged Arab nations to deliver on pledges to supply the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority (PA) with $100 million a month.

Already mired in a financial crisis, the PA has suffered further with Israel's decision to withhold the transfer of tax and tariff funds it collects on behalf of the Palestinians in the wake of their successful bid for enhanced U.N. status.

Jordan's elections commission on Wednesday approved an electoral list that was initially forbidden from registering under the name "Saddam Hussein," after the group agreed to change its title, state media said.

"The list has been accepted after it changed its name to the 'Nation's Honor.' Now we have 61 approved lists" for legislative elections this month, commission spokesman Hussein Bani Hani told the official news agency Petra.

More than 60,000 people have been killed in the Syrian conflict, the U.N. said on Wednesday, as dozens more died or were injured when a service station near Damascus was hit by an air strike.

As the casualties continued to mount, the family of a freelance U.S. journalist, who contributed videos to AFP, revealed that he was kidnapped in Syria six weeks ago and has been missing ever since.

Jordanian riot police fired tear gas on Wednesday to disperse Syrian refugees at a northern desert camp after they clashed over blankets distributed by a local charity, an official and a witness said.

"The Jordan Hashemite Charity Organization was giving away 2,000 blankets at the Zaatari camp. Some refugees tried to grab more blankets, angering other Syrians and clashes broke out," Anmar Hmud, a government spokesman for refugee affairs, told Agence France Presse.