Egypt remanded an Israeli spy suspect in custody for 15 days on Saturday despite Israel's insistence he was innocent of espionage, judicial sources said.

Ilan Grapel, a U.S.-Israeli joint citizen who was arrested in a Cairo hotel on June 12, is to remain in detention for the "needs of the investigation," the two sources said.

Hundreds of Israelis gathered near the Gaza border on Saturday at the site where Palestinian militants seized Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in a deadly raid five years ago.

The protest was being held to mark five years that Shalit has been in captivity and comes amid mounting international calls for the Islamist Hamas movement to release him or at least provide proof of life.

Syrian tanks on Saturday rolled into a village on the border with Turkey where workers are scrambling to erect a huge tent city for fear of a new exodus of refugees from the crackdown.

As families across Syria mourned 18 protesters gunned down by security forces on Friday, activists said troops backed by tanks rumbled into al-Najia village near Jisr al-Shughur, a town which the army seized on June 12 after repeated protests.

Iran protested to the United Nations on Friday over the latest sanctions imposed by the U.S. government, calling the measures "extremely dangerous" and aiming to harm civilians.

Iran's U.N. Ambassador Mohammad Khazaei said in a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that "continuation of this awkward (U.S.) policy is extremely dangerous and will never serve to the maintenance of international peace and security."

Hundreds of supporters of ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak clashed with his foes in central Cairo on Friday and dozens were injured, the official MENA news agency reported.

A small gathering of pro-Mubarak demonstrators swelled into an 800-strong protest by early evening to demand the immediate release of the former president who is in custody on charges of killing anti-regime protesters.

Soldiers in Yemen shot dead one man and wounded six others on Friday at the funeral of an al-Qaida suspect who died in custody a year ago in the south of the country, medics and witnesses said.

Jeyab al-Saadi was killed and six others were wounded, medics at Naqib hospital in the main southern city of Aden and witnesses told Agence France Presse.

Europe's leaders Friday backed French plans for a donor conference to help build a Palestinian state and urged resumption of the stalled Middle East peace process, according to a draft declaration seen by Agence France Presse.

The draft says a two-day European Union summit "supports the initiative to call a conference in Paris" to muster economic support to build a Palestinian state "in the framework of a re-launched peace process."

Syrian security forces opened fire on Friday on anti-regime rallies killing at least nine protesters, three of them in the capital Damascus, human rights activists said.

The violence came as thousands of protesters took to the streets across Syria after the weekly Muslim prayers calling for the fall of the autocratic regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has tasked Vice Premier and Minister of Strategic Affairs Moshe Yaalon to reconcile with Turkey, Israeli media revealed on Friday.

Yaalon held talks with two high-ranking officials in the Turkish foreign ministry, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and Channel 2 television network unveiled.

The European Union piled pressure on the Syrian regime on Friday, warning that its legitimacy was undermined by a brutal crackdown and imposing sanctions on three of its Iranian military allies.

EU leaders holding a summit in Brussels were to adopt a declaration condemning the "unacceptable and shocking violence the Syrian regime continues to apply on its own citizen," according to a draft obtained by Agence France Presse.