Syrian rebels Sunday freed four Filipino peacekeepers five days after seizing them at an observation post in the Golan Heights, the Philippine military's chief spokesman said, as the U.N. said Qatar played a key role in negotiating their release.

"They have been released. They are now in the custody of the commander of the Philippine battalion in the Golan Heights," Brigadier General Domingo Tutaan told Agence France Presse.

Iran has condemned as a "savage terrorist crime" twin car bomb attacks which killed 43 people and injured dozens in a small Turkish town near the Syrian border, media reported on Sunday.

The state broadcaster's website quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi as saying that "confronting terrorism is the duty of all countries".

The national council of Morocco's conservative Istiqlal party, the main ally of the ruling Islamists, decided on Saturday to pull out of the government, a party official said.

The decision by Istiqlal, which holds several ministerial portfolios including education and the economy, could mean a general election or a cabinet reshuffle by the government headed by the Party of Justice and Development, the PJD.

The U.S. ambassador to Turkey strongly condemned the "vicious attack" in a small Turkish town near the Syrian border Saturday that killed at least 40 people and wounded 100 more.

"On behalf of the United States, I offer our deepest condolences to the families and friends of the dozens of victims of today's murderous attack in Reyhanli," Francis Ricciardone said in a statement.

Polisario Front chief Mohamed Abdelaziz has warned that his movement could take up arms to seek independence from Morocco if the U.N. fails to resolve the Western Sahara conflict, Algeria's APS news agency reported Saturday.

"We have believed in the United Nations, but if it fails to organize a referendum on self-determination in Western Sahara to allow the Sahrawi people to recover independence, then we will take up arms to liberate our territory," APS quoted Abdelaziz as saying.

President Moncef Marzouki on Saturday said a travel ban on Tunisians suspected of corruption must be lifted to help shore up the ailing economy and bolster national reconciliation after the 2011 uprising.

"We must strive to remove immediately these restrictions in order to set up a mechanism of reconciliation," Marzouki said of a ban that affects an estimated 0.4 percent of the country's businessmen.

Israeli settlers and Palestinians in the northern West Bank hurled stones at each other on Saturday after the settlers marched into the village of Burin, witnesses said.

One villager was slightly hurt in the hand by a stone and another passed out from tear gas fired by troops trying to separate the two sides, an Agence France Presse journalist said.

Tunisian Foreign Minister Othmane Jarandi told Agence France Presse on Saturday that some 800 Tunisians are fighting in Islamist rebel ranks in Syria and said the country would work to repatriate its citizens taken prisoner there.

"We don't have exact numbers, since several people left the country illegally, but the most accurate estimate is a maximum of 800," fighting in Syria, he said.

Egypt's interior minister said on Saturday police arrested three members of an al-Qaida-linked cell in an alleged transnational plot to bomb a Western embassy and other targets in the country.

The suspects were arrested with explosives intended to be used to bomb a Western embassy after an investigation showed threads in Pakistan, Iran and Algeria, Mohamed Ibrahim said at a news conference.

Egyptian authorities on Saturday released the founder of one of the key youth movements behind the 2011 uprising after he was held overnight, a judicial source told Agence France Presse.

Ahmed Maher of the April 6 movement was arrested on Friday in Cairo airport where he had landed from Vienna.