Across a wide belt that stretches halfway around the globe, the world's estimated 1.6 billion Muslims will mark the beginning of Ramadan this weekend. The holy season is marred by unprecedented turmoil, violence and sectarian hatreds that threaten to rip apart the Middle East, the epicenter of Islam.

Syria is bleeding. Militants have taken over large parts of Iraq. Lebanon, Libya, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Egypt are all battling Islamic extremists. Millions of war refugees are scattered across the landscape.

The rise of jihadists in Iraq has set the West on edge, but Damascus sees it is an opportunity to legitimize its battle against rebels and promote it as a war on "terror". 

President Bashar Assad's regime has repeatedly denied the existence of a revolt seeking political change in Syria, instead branding its opponents -- both peaceful and armed -- as "terrorists".

The southern Italian port of Gioia Tauro stepped up security measures on Saturday ahead of the final transfer of Syria's chemical weapons arsenal next week. 

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), charged with extracting and destroying Syria's chemical weapons stockpile, confirmed to Agence France Presse the final transfer of banned material from the Danish vessel Ark Futura to a U.S. ship would take place in early July. 

A rocket fired from the Gaza Strip on Saturday hit an industrial zone in Sderot in southern Israel, setting a building on fire but without causing casualties, police said.

Spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told Agence France Presse a second rocket struck open ground.

Gunmen killed four Egyptian policemen in the restive northern Sinai on Saturday, a security source said, with police blaming the attack on "takfiri" jihadist militants.

Militants in the Sinai Peninsula have stepped up attacks on troops and police since the military ousted Islamist president Mohammed Morsi last July.

More than 1,000 illegal African immigrants in Israel staged a sit-in Saturday near the southern border with Egypt after a protest march against conditions in their internment camp.

"We are going to stay near the border with Egypt until a solution is found so our rights are respected," a statement by asylum-seekers at the Holot camp in southern Israel said.

Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah on Saturday sacked the deputy defense minister, Prince Khaled bin Bandar bin Abdul Aziz, just a month and a half after appointing him.

A royal decree cited by the official SPA news agency said the decision was taken at the request of Crown Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz, who also holds the defense portfolio.

The suspected ringleader of a deadly 2012 attack on the American consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi arrived in the United States on Saturday in the custody of U.S. authorities.

Four Americans including U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens were killed on September 11, 2012 when gunmen stormed the U.S. consulate and set it on fire and a CIA outpost was also targeted, in an attack that shocked Washington and has become a highly charged political issue.

Egypt's prosecution service on Saturday referred nearly 100 supporters of ousted president Mohammed Morsi to trial for alleged murders, a bombing and torching a university building, in two separate cases.

Morsi's Islamist supporters have faced a brutal police crackdown since his ouster by the army last July that has left more than 1,400 people dead and over 15,000 in jail.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said in Damascus on Saturday that his country "will not remain passive" as jihadists push an offensive in Syria's neighbor Iraq.

"Russia will not remain passive to the attempts by some groups to spread terrorism in the region," Ryabkov told journalists after meeting with President Bashar Assad.