A French yacht carrying pro-Palestinian activists which set sail from a Greek island at the weekend, is expected to reach the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, organizers said.

The Dignite (al-Karama) left the Greek island of Kastellorizo late on Saturday following a troubled stay in Greece after Athens imposed a ban on the departure of any ships planning to join an international aid flotilla heading for Gaza.

A clutch of European Union foreign ministers called for change in Syria on Monday, with Britain's chief diplomat telling President Bashar al-Assad that he must reform or stand down.

"The situation remains very serious and, if anything, is deteriorating," said British Foreign Secretary William Hague.

Iran has taken "full control" of three camps of the Iranian Kurdish rebel PJAK movement inside neighboring Iraq, a commander of the elite Revolutionary Guards told the official IRNA news agency on Monday.

"All the three camps on Iraqi soil that were backing the terrorist group have fallen under our control and we have full control of the area," said Colonel Delavar Ranjbarzadeh, who commands Revolutionary Guards in the border town of Sardasht. He added that operations launched on Saturday inside Iraq was still continuing in other areas.

Russia on Monday refused to recognize the rebel National Transitional Council as Libya's official authority but said it would view it as a formal negotiating partner.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said last week's recognition by Western and regional powers of the opposition government at the expense of Moammar Gadhafi's regime was tantamount to picking sides in a civil war.

Libya is responsible for a deadly 1989 attack on a French airliner, Libyan former foreign minister Abdel Rahman Shalgam told the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat newspaper in an interview published on Monday.

"The Libyan security services blew up the plane. They believed that opposition leader Mohammed al-Megrief was on board, but after the plane was blown up, it was found that he was not on the plane," said Shalgam, who defected from Moammar Gadhafi's embattled regime earlier this year.

Two Palestinian militants were injured early on Monday in an Israeli air strike on southern Gaza, medics said following days of unrest in the territory.

The Israeli army confirmed the strike, which was the fifth confirmed air raid on the enclave in six days.

A Red Sea hospital on Sunday denied a report that Egypt's ailing former president Hosni Mubarak had fallen into a "full coma," two weeks before he is due to go on trial for murder and corruption.

"The former president is in a full coma after his health suddenly deteriorated," state television quoted Mubarak's lawyer as saying.

Tens of thousands of Yemenis marched through the country's second city Taez on Sunday in what they called a "day of rage" against President Ali Abdullah Saleh on the anniversary of his rise to power in 1978.

Demonstrators assembled on Taez's main arterial road, chanting anti-Saleh slogans and waving black flags to mourn the embattled president's 33-year rule, the rally's organizers said.

The battle for the oil town of Brega switched from the desert to intense street fighting in the town's northeast on Sunday, as veteran Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi vowed never to quit and fresh blasts rocked Tripoli.

Rebel forces re-entered Brega -- putting them within sight of a major strategic victory -- but said they had not yet managed to wrest control of the town from Gadhafi's troops, who have held it since April.

Bahrain's main Shiite opposition bloc, Al-Wefaq, said on Sunday it was pulling out of a "national dialogue" with the government on political reform because the initiative was not serious.

Khalil al-Marzouk, who led the bloc's delegation to the talks, told Agence France Presse that Al-Wefaq had decided to pull out and the decision would be confirmed on Monday by its Shoura (consultative) council, or leadership.