Activists called a general strike on Sunday to step up the pressure on Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime as fears grew of an "invasion" of the besieged protest hub of Homs.

In a civil disobedience campaign, anti-regime protesters were organizing sit-ins, the closure of shops and universities, and the strike.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki headed to Washington on Sunday, for the first time as the leader of a country virtually empty of foreign troops as the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq nears its final days.

Maliki is to hold wide-ranging talks with U.S. President Barack Obama during his two-day visit, which comes less than a month before the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and more than eight years after the launch of the U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.

A Palestinian father and his daughter were wounded as their home was hit in an Israeli air raid on Gaza City early on Sunday, medics said.

They said the two were wounded in the Zeitun area of Gaza City when a missile struck, apparently targeting a neighboring building.

Tunisia's constituent assembly on Saturday adopted a provisional constitution that will allow the north African country to name a government, a month and a half after its first post-revolution election.

The 217-member assembly approved each of the 26 clauses of the document individually to get state institutions back on the move before voting on the entire basic law.

Israel's new ambassador to Egypt, Yaakov Amitai, is to take up his post in Cairo on Monday, three months after an attack on the mission, a foreign ministry source said.

The source, declining to be named, said Amitai, replacing Yitzhak Levanon who has completed his term as ambassador to Egypt, would present his credentials at a later date.

A gunfight erupted near Tripoli international airport in which two people were wounded on Saturday, a Libyan army official and a former rebel told Agence France Presse.

Army official Samy Kamuka said the firefight erupted when a group of former rebels of the Zintan brigade clashed with former rebels from Tripoli.

The Palestinian premier on Saturday slammed U.S. presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich for belittling the Palestinians as an "invented" people and demanded an apology.

Gingrich, leading in some national polls for the Republican Party nomination, made the comments in a Friday interview to be aired with the Jewish Channel satellite television.

A group identifying itself as an offshoot of al-Qaida in the Islamic Magreb (AQIM) said Saturday it was holding three Westerners kidnapped from a refugee camp in Algeria in October.

"This is the Jamat Tawhid Wal Jihad Fi Garbi Afriqqiya in west Africa. We claim the operation carried out on October 23 at Tindouf when two Spaniards and an Italian were kidnapped," said the audio and written message sent to Agence France Presse's correspondent in Bamako.

Gaza militants fired four rockets at southern Israel early Saturday after Israeli warplanes attacked Gaza, in the latest tit-for-tat attack between the two sides.

A police spokeswoman told Agence France Presse that none of the rockets caused casualties or damage. The Gaza militant group Popular Resistance Committees took responsibility for the Saturday firings.

Weekend clashes in southern Yemen left two government soldiers and 11 suspected members of al-Qaida dead, military and local sources told Agence France Presse Saturday.

Government troops have for months been battling al-Qaida linked fighters in the troubled Abyan province, notably in the areas surrounding the provincial capital Zinjibar, where the latest clashes took place.