An attack by al-Qaida extremists on troops in Yemen's restive south sparked fierce clashes in which at least 103 soldiers and 25 militants were killed, medics and military officials said on Monday.

"The toll from the battles between the army and Qaida militants ... has risen to at least 103" soldiers, a military official said.

Suspected al-Qaida gunmen, some wearing army uniforms, raged through a western Iraq city on Monday in a pre-dawn shooting spree that killed 27 policemen, including two officers killed execution-style.

The assault, launched at about 2:00 am (23:00 GMT on Sunday), saw insurgents dressed in military uniforms simultaneously attacking two checkpoints in the east and west of Haditha before storming other security posts and raiding the homes of the two officers.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal on Sunday urged Moscow to "advise" its ally Syria to stop its deadly crackdown against dissent.

"Unfortunately, international efforts have failed and we have not seen results to stop the bloodshed and massacres in Syria," he told a news conference in the Saudi capital.

Israel has offered to send humanitarian aid to Syrian civilians affected by the regime's crackdown on protests through the International Committee of the Red Cross, the foreign ministry said on Sunday.

"Israel's foreign ministry has offered to transfer humanitarian aid to the people of Syria through the international Red Cross," the ministry said in a statement.

An Israeli court decided Sunday to shorten the administrative detention of a Palestinian woman freed in a prisoner swap with Israel and refusing food since she was re-arrested, her lawyer said.

Hanaa al-Shalabi has been on hunger strike since the day of her arrest on February 16, when she was originally ordered detained without trial for six months.

Israel "shall prevail" if forced to fight Iran, "an evil, cruel and morally corrupt regime" bent on controlling the Middle East, Israeli President Shimon Peres said in Washington Sunday.

His speech to a powerful pro-Israel lobby charged up the atmosphere for talks Monday between U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who will tackle the perceived nuclear threat from Iran.

Fierce clashes between the Yemeni army and al-Qaida in the country's restive south killed at least 30 soldiers and 12 militants on Sunday, medics and officials said.

"So far 30 soldiers have been killed and the toll is expected to rise as some bodies have not been transferred to hospital yet," a military official said on condition of anonymity.

Algeria's prime minister vowed on Sunday to eradicate terrorism, a day after a suicide bomber crashed an explosives-laden car into a police station in the remote Algerian desert.

Twenty-three people were injured and the attacker killed in Saturday's blast in Tamanrasset, 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) south of Algiers, in what was the first attack of its kind in that part of the country.

Iran's parliament looks certain to be dominated by MPs critical of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, according to preliminary election results that also showed a big turnover in lawmakers.

The partial results, from elections held last Friday, accounted for two-thirds of the 290 seats in parliament.

Syrian artillery gunners pounded the mainly rebel-held city of Rastan on Sunday, as 15 people were killed across the country and the Red Cross began delivering aid to refugees from the battered Homs district of Baba Amr, monitors said.

The Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said security forces killed seven people in the central province of Homs, three in the restive countryside around Damascus, one in the northern province of Aleppo, one in the central province of Hama, one in the southern province of Daraa and another in the eastern province of Deir al-Zour.