Representatives of Israel's growing social protest movement have called for massive demonstrations on Saturday night to further press their calls for a reduction in the cost of living.

"All the people who are involved in this wave of protests have called for mass demonstrations against the government this Saturday night in Tel Aviv and other cities," protest leader Stav Shafir told Agence France Presse.

Israel is to free 770 Israeli and Palestinian prisoners, including a founder of the Islamist movement Hamas, due to overcrowding, a prison services spokeswoman told Agence France Presse on Thursday.

Sivan Weizman said that all of the prisoners, among them 200 Palestinians, had almost completed their sentences.

France said Thursday its aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle would return home for maintenance next week from the NATO-led mission over Libya, but insisted there would be no respite for Moammar Gadhafi.

The vessel, France's only aircraft carrier and Europe's biggest warship, will leave on August 10 to head for its home port of Toulon for several weeks of work, defense minister Gerard Longuet told Var-Matin newspaper.

Kuwait has freed nine Iraqis who were jailed over a failed plot to assassinate former U.S. president George Bush senior in 1993, al-Anbaa newspaper reported Thursday.

Quoting an unnamed security official, the daily said that the Kuwaiti authorities had decided to deport the men to Iraq following a visit by officials from Baghdad.

Two civilians were killed and three others injured overnight during clashes with police in a village of Yemen's southeastern Hadramawt province, witnesses and medics said on Thursday.

The violence broke out after hundreds of people took to the streets of Shahr village on Wednesday night to protest after a policeman killed a young villager last week, said the witnesses.

Syria's embattled president on Thursday decreed a law allowing opposition political parties, state media said after the United Nations condemned his regime's deadly crackdown on democracy protests.

"President Bashar Assad on Thursday issued Legislative Decree No. 100 for 2011 on Parties Law and Legislative Decree No. 101 for 2011 on General Election Law," the official SANA news agency said in a brief report.

Israel's air force carried out two raids on the Gaza Strip early Thursday without causing any casualties, witnesses said.

The attacks targeted bases of the Ezzedin al-Qassam Brigades, the military branch of Hamas that controls the tiny Palestinian coastal enclave, to the east and west of Gaza City.

The unity of Libya's revolutionaries on Wednesday became the latest casualty of the shock assassination of a top general, as a key rebel group demanded senior ministers and military brass be fired.

The head of the February 17 Coalition -- whose members kick-started the revolt against Moammar Gadhafi -- told Agence France Presse the ministers of defense and international affairs must be sacked in the wake of last week's murder of General Abdul Fatah Younis.

The United States Wednesday said it had no interest in seeing Syria's President Bashar al-Assad survive simply to preserve regional "stability," hardening its line on what it termed a "grotesque" crackdown on dissent.

Some analysts have speculated that Washington has been wary of directly calling for Assad to quit because of anxiety that security chaos, civil war and a Middle East power vacuum might follow the demise of his regime.

The United Nations condemned on Wednesday the Syrian government's deadly crackdown on protests and called for those responsible to be held "accountable," as tanks stormed the protest hub of Hama.

A Security Council statement agreed after weeks of often-acrimonious talks said the body "condemns the widespread violations of human rights and the use of force against civilians by the Syrian authorities."