The party belonging to the powerful Muslim Brotherhood on Tuesday slammed the "failure" of the military-appointed government, and renewed its call for a national consensus cabinet.

"Egypt still suffers increasing economic and security crises which confirms the failure of the current government," the Freedom and Justice Party said in a statement.

A Palestinian prisoner has ended his 66-day hunger strike over his detention without charge under a deal that will see him released in April, Palestinian and Israeli officials told Agence France Presse on Tuesday.

"The Israeli court decided to release Khader Adnan on April 17 and based on that he ended his hunger strike," Palestinian prisoner affairs minister Issa Qaraqaa said.

Separatists who had vowed to mark Tuesday's presidential vote as a day of "civil disobedience" have seized half of the polling booths in Yemen's main southern city Aden, a government official said.

"Half of the polling booths in Aden have been shut down after they were seized by gunmen from the Southern Movement," a local government official told Agence France Presse.

China on Tuesday refused to commit to attend an international conference in Tunis this week after Russia said it would boycott the meeting aimed at seeking political change in Syria.

The Friends of Syria group will meet for the first time on Friday after being created in response to a joint veto by China and Russia of a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning a bloody crackdown on protests in Syria.

Iraq will quickly approve the nomination of a non-resident Saudi ambassador, meaning the kingdom will have an ambassador to Iraq for the first time since 1990, the Iraqi premier's spokesman said Tuesday.

"Iraq's response accepting this request will be quick," Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's spokesman Ali Moussawi told Agence France Presse.

Two Iranian warships sent by Tehran to the Mediterranean last week to help "train the Syrian navy" entered the Suez canal early on Tuesday on their way back to Iran, a canal authorities source told Agence France Presse.

The ships, a destroyer and supply vessel, came from the Syrian port of Tartus and were heading south towards the Red Sea, the source said, adding that they were due to complete their transit of the canal by Tuesday afternoon.

Four people including a child were killed in clashes Tuesday in south Yemen between security forces and separatists, who have called for "civil disobedience" in protest at the country's presidential polls, officials and medics said.

A 10-year-old child was killed when militants from the separatist Southern Movement traded gunfire with police near the election commission headquarters in Aden's Dar Saad neighborhood, residents and medics said.

Syrian forces killed 57 civilians Tuesday as they blitzed the city of Homs and a village in Idlib province, monitors said, as the Red Cross sought a truce to deliver aid and the United Nations demanded unimpeded access for aid groups.

The escalation comes as Russia, a key ally of President Bashar al-Assad's regime, said it will boycott an international conference in Tunis this week aimed at seeking political change in Syria and China refused to commit.

Russia on Tuesday said it will not attend an international conference in Tunis this week aimed at seeking political change in Syria because the meeting only supported the opposition's cause.

The meeting was called "for the purpose of supporting one side against another in an internal conflict," the foreign ministry said in a statement. "We cannot accept the offer to attend this meeting."

Yemen's future president Abdrabuh Mansour Hadi hailed Tuesday's election, in which he is the sole candidate, as a "historic day" that would open a new page for the country, as he cast his ballot amid tight security.

"This is a historic day in Yemen. We will turn the page of the past and open a bright new page on which we will write the future of a new Yemen," Hadi told reporters, as he posted his ballot into a box at a polling station in Sanaa amid applause.