The oil-rich United Arab Emirates holds its second-ever polls next month after allowing many more citizens to vote, taking baby steps toward democracy in a state where virtually no one is pushing for quick change.

Eligible voters are picked by rulers of each of the seven sheikhdoms that comprise the UAE federation, using criteria that are not entirely clear. Candidates must come from the same hand-picked electoral college.

A rocket fired from Gaza on Sunday hit southern Israel in what was the fourth projectile lobbed across the border since a truce took hold two days earlier, Israeli officials said.

The rocket landed near Khatzerim, a village just west of the southern desert city of Beersheva, a police spokeswoman said.

Syria on Sunday rejected an Arab League statement demanding an end to the bloodshed in the country as the organization’s chief waited for a green light to travel to Damascus.

In a diplomatic note to the organization’s secretariat seen by Agence France Presse, Syria said the statement amounted to "a clear violation ... of the principles of the Arab League charter and of the foundations of joint Arab action."

Libyan rebels on Friday took control of the Ras Jdir post on the border with Tunisia, and raised the flag of the rebellion, a Tunisian government source told Agence France Presse.

"More than 100 Libyan rebels arrived Friday at Ras Jdir," the source said.

A second suspected nuclear installation has been identified in Syria, according to commercial satellite photos, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The publishing Wednesday of the photos by Washington's Institute for Science and International Security could increase pressure on the United Nations to demand wide new inspections of suspect Syrian facilities during a March board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Charred skeletons of some 50 people were found in a makeshift prison next to a military base abandoned by elite troops loyal to Moammar Gadhafi in southern Tripoli on Saturday, an Agence France Presse reporter saw.

Local residents discovered the remains after rebel forces took control of the base of the 32 Brigade commanded by Gadhafi's son Khamis in the district of Salaheddin.

Arab foreign ministers meeting in Cairo on Saturday were to warn Syria they will no longer remain silent on its deadly crackdown on dissent, an Arab diplomat said.

The meeting, being held in the absence of Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem, was to move first to re-admit Libya in the presence of the rebel government's Prime Minister Mahmud Jibril, who was in Cairo.

At least 25 people, all but one of them women and children, were killed when a bus caught fire after being hit by a car in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Saturday, a police chief said.

The families were travelling on the bus from Baghdad to the northern Kurdish province of Dohuk when the vehicle got stuck in a pothole, according to Kirkuk province police chief Major General Jamal Taher Bakr.

Iran on Saturday inaugurated a plant for producing carbon fiber, which it is banned from importing by international sanctions targeting dual-use materials, the official IRNA news agency reported.

"Today we are witnessing the fulfillment of a strategic project of the Ministry of Defense," Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi said as he inaugurated the production facility, IRNA reported.

Syrian security forces killed two anti-regime demonstrators on Saturday morning and wounded another 15 in Damascus and in the northern province of Idlib, rights activists said.

In the capital's western quarter of Kafar Susseh, one demonstrator was killed and 10 hurt when club-wielding security forces attacked a group of people leaving prayers at the Rifai mosque, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.