Military air strikes on a mosque killed seven civilians Monday in Jaar, an al-Qaida stronghold town in the southern Yemeni province of Abyan, a local official said.

"The Yemeni air force accidentally shelled a mosque in Jaar, killing seven people and wounding five others," the official told Agence France Presse, on condition of anonymity.

Forty Israeli passengers on a Turkish flight to Istanbul were held for an hour and a half upon arrival and questioned before being released, the Israeli foreign ministry said on Monday.

The incident came as tensions between the former allies reached new heights over a deadly May 2010 Israeli raid on a flotilla of ships that left nine Turkish citizens dead.

Syrian troops and security forces on Monday launched an assault on the central cities of Hama and Homs, where they shot dead six people, activists said, while at least two were reported killed near the Turkish border.

"More than 30 military vehicles and security forces raided Hama this morning and heavy gunfire was heard in the city," Omar Idlibi, spokesman of the Local Coordination Committees (LCC), told Agence France Presse by telephone.

The trial of Hosni Mubarak and his two sons' trial was postponed on Monday after the prosecution and defense lawyers clashed in the court room.

Dozens of the ousted Egyptian president's supporters and opponents clashed near the Cairo court before he arrived on a stretcher.

Qatar's Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani said Monday that Syrians are determined to keep protesting against President Bashar Assad's regime despite a deadly crackdown.

"The killing is nearly daily. But it's clear that the Syrian people will not turn back on their demands," Sheikh Hamad told pan-Arab news channel al-Jazeera.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad on Monday said the Israeli government bore "full responsibility" for an arson attack on a mosque in the northern West Bank.

"The Israeli government bears full responsibility for these attacks against our people, property and sacred places," Fayyad said in a statement issued several hours after burning tires were rolled into the ground floor of a mosque in Qusra village, some 15 kilometers (12 miles) southeast of Nablus.

Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards have killed 22 rebels of the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK) in a new offensive along the northwestern border with Iraq, state television reported on Monday.

"Twenty-two PJAK rebels were killed in the new Guards operations in Sardasht Heights, and another 27 rebels have been wounded," the report said.

The Palestinians will not be deterred from seeking United Nations membership, a senior official said in Ramallah Sunday, after reports Washington was trying to head off their bid.

"The Palestinians are going to the U.N. Security Council to ask for recognition for the state of Palestine on the 1967 borders ... and there is no turning back or other choice than this one," said leading Palestinian official Nabil Shaath.

The BRICS group of emerging powers are determined not to allow a Libyan-style solution to the crisis in Syria, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Sunday.

"If it's up to the BRICS, the Libyan scenario won't be repeated," Russian news agencies quoted Lavrov as saying in a joint press conference with his Brazilian counterpart Antonio Patriota.

Negotiations for the surrender of Moammar Gadhafi’s forces in the Libyan town of Bani Walid have failed and will not resume, the chief negotiator for the National Transitional Council said Sunday.

"I am leaving the military commander to resolve the problem," Abdullah Kenshil said when asked if an attack would now be launched on the town southeast of Tripoli where at least one of Gadhafi’s sons is reputed to be hiding.