Rival Palestinian groups Fatah and Hamas opened talks Sunday in Egypt aimed at implementing a reconciliation agreement struck in May, state news agency MENA reported.

The two sides held consultations late Saturday in the presence of Egyptian intelligence officials, the agency said, adding Fatah's delegation is led by Azzam al-Ahmed and Hamas by Moussa Abu Marzouq.

Syrian President Bashar Assad’s advisor Buthaina Shaaban criticized on Sunday’s Turkey’s position on the developments in Syria, saying that its Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu will hear “stronger statements when he visits Syria.”

She said in a statement: “If the Turkish foreign minister believes that he is arriving in Syria to deliver a firm message, then he will hear a firmer message from us.”

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has left hospital in Riyadh, two months after he was badly wounded in a bomb attack as his forces waged a deadly crackdown on protesters, a Saudi official said on Sunday.

"The Yemeni president left the military hospital this (Saturday) evening at 9 pm (1800 GMT) after receiving the necessary treatment and was taken to a temporary residence for a recovery period," the Saudi official told AFP.

Radical anti-U.S. cleric Moqtada al-Sadr warned that any U.S. training mission in Iraq after 2011 would amount to an occupation force and need to be opposed by "military means," in a letter seen on Sunday.

The letter, released on Saturday in the Shiite cleric's base in the shrine city of Najaf, came after Baghdad agreed to open talks with Washington for a training mission post-2011, when all U.S. troops are due to have left.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu will visit Syria on Tuesday with the message that Ankara "has run out of patience" with the ongoing violence, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.

"We have reached the end of our patience and that's why I am sending the foreign minister to Syria on Tuesday," Erdogan was quoted by the Anatolia news agency as saying.

U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon told Syrian President Bashar Assad on Saturday to immediately end his deadly military campaign against opponents, the United Nations said.

Ban also said the use of mass arrests must also be halted in Syria in the first contacts between the two since April.

Almost a quarter of a million Israelis rallied in central Tel Aviv on Saturday, police said, for a mass protest aimed at pushing the government into reforms to ease the cost of living.

The organizers appeared to have achieved their target of drawing a "critical mass" out onto the streets to underline the staying power of a movement which began in mid-July over housing costs.

Security forces on Saturday arrested prominent opposition figure and former political prisoner Walid al-Bunni and his two sons, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.

The arrests came after Syria vowed on Saturday to hold "free and transparent" elections by the end of 2011 as Arab states in the Gulf joined a chorus of Western pressure over its deadly suppression of anti-regime protests.

Rebel commanders said their fighters captured the town of Bir Ghanam, 80 kilometers south of the Libyan capital, on Saturday.

An Agence France Presse correspondent, although he did not visit Bir Ghanam, was with the several hundred fighters as they advanced north on a road strewn with burned-out vehicles of the Libyan army, some with bodies of dead soldiers inside.

Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said on Saturday that elections to a new parliament will be held by year's end, as Syria's regime faces international pressure over its deadly crackdown on protests.

"Syria will hold free and transparent elections that will give birth to a parliament representing the aspirations of the Syrian people," Muallem said in a meeting with foreign ambassadors posted to Damascus.