Iran has arrested 11 journalists working for media outlets seen close to the country's marginalized reformists for their alleged cooperation with foreign Persian press, local reports said on Monday.

The arrests come as Iran gears up for its June 14 presidential election, after the result of the previous June 2009 vote triggered protests in Tehran and other cities, sparking a bloody crackdown by the regime on demonstrators.

Three people were killed as Yemen's army launched an offensive against Al-Qaida-linked militants suspected of holding three European hostages abducted last month, tribal sources said on Monday.

"Three people died" and several others were wounded in the operation since late Sunday in the Al-Qaida stronghold town of Manaseh in the central province of Bayda, tribal sources and medics said.

Ten rebels were killed in combat with government forces in Hasakeh, a majority-Kurdish city in northeast Syria, while fighting raged in a Damascus district on Monday, a watchdog said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the fighting in Hasakeh occurred at the al-Ghazal roundabout late on Sunday, but gave no further details.

Israel's foreign ministry said Monday it was "surprised" by Argentina's agreement with Iran to create an independent commission to investigate the 1994 attack on a Buenos Aires Jewish center.

"We were surprised by the news," foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told Agence France Presse. "We are waiting to receive full details from the Argentines on what is going on because this subject is obviously directly related to Israel."

Ten Palestinians have been killed and dozens severely injured over the past eight years when hit by "non-lethal" arms used by Israeli forces in the West Bank, an Israeli watchdog said on Monday.

Israeli rights group B'Tselem said these weapons were used by Israeli forces as crowd control munitions but they are still arms that have caused deaths.

Israeli and U.S. scientists said on Sunday that comatose ex-premier Ariel Sharon showed "significant brain activity" in an MRI scan, responding to pictures of his family seven years after a stroke left him unconscious.

Ben Gurion University, in the southern Israeli town of Beersheva, said its neuroscientists, an expert from the city's Soroka hospital and Professor Martin Monti from the University of California, Los Angeles ran two hours of pioneering tests on the former prime minister.

President Mohamed Morsi Sunday declared a state of emergency in three provinces hit by rioting which has left dozens dead, warning he was ready to take further steps to confront threats to Egypt's security.

Emergency measures would come into effect in the provinces of Port Said, Suez and Ismailia "for 30 days starting at midnight (2200 GMT Sunday)," Morsi said in an address on state television.

A Tehran court on Sunday sentenced an Iranian-American pastor to eight years in prison over his role in underground churches in the Islamic nation, a U.S. group supporting him said.

Saeed Abedini, a naturalized U.S. citizen who converted to Christianity, was convicted of threatening Iran's national security over underground church activities a decade ago, according to the American Center for Law and Justice.

A Jerusalem court on Sunday set February 17 as the opening date for former Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman's trial on corruption charges.

The case is to be heard by a panel of three judges, according to a copy of the ruling by the Jerusalem magistrates court.

A Muslim Brotherhood official and member of the local council from Misrata shot dead as he left a mosque in the Libyan city, a local source told Agence France Presse on Sunday.

"Sheikh Mohamed bin Othman was shot dead as he left a mosque after prayers" on Saturday, the source said on the condition of anonymity.