Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki declared "Iraq Day" on Saturday to mark the end of a pact allowing U.S. forces to stay in the country, two weeks after they left and with Iraq mired in a political row.

Speaking at a ceremony at the al-Shaab stadium complex in central Baghdad, Maliki said December 31 was "a feast for all Iraqis" and marked "the day Iraq became sovereign".

The rebel Free Syrian Army is suspending operations against regime forces during the mission of monitors deployed in Syria to implement an Arab League peace plan, its chief told Agence France Presse on Saturday.

"We have decided to stop all the operations, except those for self-defense," dissident Colonel Riyadh Asaad told AFP in a telephone interview from his base in Turkey.

Sectarian clashes broke out in the southern Egyptian province of Assiut after a Christian student posted a drawing of the Muslim prophet on the Internet, officials said on Saturday.

The clashes, which spread to three villages, saw several Christian homes burned and left five police officers injured, a security official told Agence France Presse.

Two Yemeni soldiers and two suspected al-Qaida militants were killed in clashes overnight near the restive southern city of Zinjibar, a military source said on Saturday.

Three soldiers and four members of the Partisans of Sharia, an al-Qaida-linked insurgent group that took over most of Zinjibar earlier this year, were wounded in the fighting, the source said.

The United Nations said Friday it expects Syrian authorities to grant unfettered access and complete cooperation to Arab observers as bloodshed continues amid a crackdown on protesters.

"It is critical that the observer mission be given unhindered access and full cooperation by the government of Syria, and that its independence and impartiality be fully preserved," U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said.

The Syrian National Council (SNC) opposition group has signed a political agreement with another faction of dissidents laying the ground rules for a "transitional period" should the regime be toppled, a statement said.

The SNC, a major umbrella of factions opposed to Syrian President Bashar Assad, signed the deal with the National Coordination Body for Democratic Change in Syria, NCB chief Hassan Abdel Azim told Agence France Presse.

Jordan has chosen 12 judges and military experts to join an Arab League observer mission in Syria, a newspaper reported on Saturday.

The semi-official Ad-Dustour newspaper quoted Information Minister Rakan Majali as saying "the final list of names of the Jordanian team expected to join the observers' mission in Syria is ready."

The Philippine foreign minister will fly to Syria to help speed up the repatriation of Filipinos from the strife-torn country, a statement said Saturday.

Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario will depart on a Qatar Airways flight to Damascus late Saturday to make sure that the repatriation of Filipinos "can be made as secure as possible,” the ministry said in a statement.

Al-Qaida has sent militants to Libya in a bid to recruit a fighting force after the fall of Moammar Gadhafi's regime, but the group has yet to gain a strong foothold there, U.S. officials said Friday.

The assessment of al-Qaida's efforts in Libya came in response to a report by CNN television that experienced militants from the network -- including a former British terror suspect -- had been dispatched to the country and had managed to mobilize fighters.

Thousands of Yemenis held rival rallies across Sanaa on Friday despite President Ali Abdullah Saleh's agreement to quit and a military panel continuing to lift barricades from the streets, witnesses said.

Thousands of protesters gathered at Sittin Avenue in Sanaa's northern district calling for the trial of Saleh and all those involved in the killing of 13 people in last week's "March for Life," in which protesters walked from the flashpoint city of Taez to the capital.