Thousands of cheering Palestinians welcomed their president Mahmoud Abbas at his Ramallah headquarters on Sunday as he returned from delivering a historic U.N. membership bid.

An Agence France Presse reporter saw Abbas descend from his motorcade and enter the presidential building known as the Muqataa.

Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz announced on Sunday he was giving women the right to vote and run in municipal elections, the only public polls in the ultra-conservative Gulf kingdom.

He also announced that women would have the right to join the all-appointed Shoura (consultative) Council, in an address opening a new term of the council.

Forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi attacked the Ghadames oasis southwest of Tripoli at dawn on Sunday, killing at least five new regime fighters, a local official and two witnesses told Agence France Presse.

"We came under attack at dawn today from Gadhafi loyalists and groups of Tuaregs," Muhandes Sirajeddin, deputy chief of the local council in Ghadames 600 kilometers (370 miles) southwest of the capital, told AFP by telephone.

Yemen troops opened fire Sunday on protesters calling for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to be tried for crimes against Yemenis, killing one person, hours before he was expected to make a speech.

The protester was shot in the head as he shouted into a megaphone while perched on top of a minivan that was leading the march of tens of thousands of people in the city, an Agence France Presse correspondent reported.

Multiple blasts at a passport and identity card office in the Iraqi shrine city of Karbala killed at least nine people on Sunday, part of nationwide violence that left 12 dead.

The series of explosions in the central city also wounded nearly 100 people and caused major damage to buildings, leading security forces to cordon off the scene and close all entrances to Karbala.

International efforts to get Palestinians and Israelis back to talks in the next four weeks will be a test of the "sincerity" of the foes, according to Middle East envoy Tony Blair.

And the ambitious target set by the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations to restart direct negotiations could become a pressing new deadline, diplomats say.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has stressed that “sooner or later” Syrian President Bashar Assad will be ousted by his own people.

Erdogan, in an interview on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” to be aired Sunday, he said: “You can never remain in power through cruelty. You can never stand before the will of the people.”

Just over a quarter of voters selected by the rulers of the United Arab Emirates took part in the second-ever polls to elect half the country's advisory Federal National Council, results showed Sunday.

Only 35,877 voters voted on Saturday to elect 20 members of the Federal National Council, representing around 28 percent of some 129,000 Emirati citizens with the right to vote, National Election Committee figures showed.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday he is ready to accept a Quartet plan that foresees a peace deal with the Palestinians by the end of 2012.

"If the Quartet calls for the resumption of direct negotiations without preconditions, I think it's an important thing," Netanyahu said in an interview with Channel 10 from the United States.

Lawyers for alleged victims of Egyptian ex-president Hosni Mubarak in his murder trial demanded a new judge on Saturday after military ruler Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi testified in court.

Tantawi, who served as defense minister for Mubarak before his overthrow by a popular revolt on February 11, testified behind closed doors.