The head of the now-defunct U.N. observer team in Syria, General Babacar Gaye, left Damascus on Saturday after the Security Council called time on the troubled mission, his aides said.

The mission officially ended on at midnight last Sunday amid escalating violence and divisions at the U.N. Security Council over how to end a conflict now in its 18th month.

The body of a veteran Japanese war reporter killed while covering the anti-regime movement in Syria's second city was flown home on Saturday.

Mika Yamamoto apparently came under fire Monday from pro-government troops in Aleppo, which has borne the brunt of the conflict since fighting erupted there last month, according to her long-time colleague Kazutaka Sato.

Veteran Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal is still recovering in hospital from an operation earlier this month but should be discharged soon, the royal court said late Friday.

"The respirator used after the fully successful surgery was removed on Friday," the court said in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency.

New U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakdhar Brahimi said Friday that he was "scared" at the size of the task of ending the Syria conflict.

The former Algerian foreign minister made the comments as he started meetings with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and other top officials and U.N. ambassadors before officially taking the place of Kofi Annan on September 1.

Yemeni security forces have arrested six suspected members of al-Qaida, including a mosque's imam, in the southern city of Aden, a security official said Friday.

Police raided a house in the Kraitar neighborhood of Aden at dawn on Friday and arrested three suspects, the official said, adding that the imam of a mosque in Mansura area was also arrested from his house late on Thursday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a visiting U.S. congressman on Friday that Iran was speeding up its quest for nuclear weapons in defiance of international sanctions.

"Just yesterday, we received additional proof of the fact that Iran is continuing to make accelerated progress toward achieving nuclear weapons while totally ignoring international demands," Netanyahu's office quoted him as telling Republican Congressman Mike Rogers.

Several hundred protesters rallied on Friday in Cairo against President Mohammed Morsi, a much smaller turn out than hoped for by activists bent on challenging the country's first Islamist president.

In Cairo's Tahrir Square, where hundreds of thousands rallied to overthrow president Hosni Mubarak early last year, several dozen of Morsi's opponents briefly clashed with his supporters before withdrawing, witnesses said.

Two young men have been arrested after seven graves were desecrated in a Christian cemetery of Rouiba, eastern Algeria, the country's media reported on Thursday.

The two youths, aged 19 and 26, appeared in court "for desecration of graves and put in custody," a police source was quoted as saying in the media. No other details were provided.

August is already the deadliest single month of the Syria conflict with over 4,000 people killed, a watchdog said Friday, amid increasing macabre reports of dozens of bodies found bound and shot in the head.

At least 3,000 civilians and rebels have been killed in just over three weeks, in addition to 918 soldiers and 38 deserters, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The Gaza Strip's Hamas government said on Friday that prime minister Ismail Haniya was planning cabinet reshuffle which he would ask parliament to endorse.

"The prime minister has ended consultation on a reshuffle, which is expected to be presented soon to the legislative council for a vote of confidence," Haniya's office said in a statement.