A U.N. rapporteur Thursday slammed a highly anticipated U.N. report said to back a 2010 Israeli commando raid on an aid flotilla aiming to break the Gaza blockade which left nine people dead.

"The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Prof. Olivier De Schutter, has received a draft of this report and he firmly opposes its conclusions," De Schutter's office said in an email.

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, his face burned and his hands covered with bandages, appeared on television Thursday for the first time since he was wounded in a bomb attack on his palace in Sanaa.

Saleh, who has been hospitalized in Saudi Arabia since the June 3 attack, was barely recognizable and sat stiffly as he spoke in the pre-recorded statement broadcast on Yemeni television.

Around 100 families have fled Syria's central city of Hama fearing a military crackdown on massive protests against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, a rights group said on Thursday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that about 1,000 people in total had left Hama, where it said Syrian troops had killed 23 civilians since Tuesday.

Bahrain's main Shiite opposition formation will shun parts of the national dialogue which the authorities say aims to bring forward reforms in the restive kingdom, a member said on Thursday.

"We will boycott the meetings of the economic and social committees but will continue to attend the meetings of the political and rights committees," Khalil al-Marzooq a leading member of the Islamic National Accord Association (al-Wefaq), told Agence France Presse.

Egypt's electoral commission has granted a license to a new liberal party founded by telecom magnate Naguib Sawiris ahead of key polls in September, state media reported on Thursday.

The Free Egyptians Party, which was legalized on Wednesday, said it would work for a civil state and promote freedom of faith.

An Israeli soldier was moderately injured on Thursday in a blast apparently caused by an explosive device along the border with the Gaza Strip, an army spokesman said.

"The soldier was moderately injured, apparently by an explosive device," he said, without saying on which side of the border the incident had occurred.

Five sick Libyan babies and children arrived in Malta overnight Thursday for treatment at the country's public hospital, a government statement said.

The children, aged between four months and five years, arrived on a flight from rebel-held Benghazi accompanied by relatives. They were welcomed by Health Minister Joe Cassar.

Suspected al-Qaida militants killed 10 soldiers in an ambush on a road in southern Yemen, where the jihadist network has a stronghold, a military official said on Thursday.

The gunmen opened fire on the vehicle in which the soldiers were travelling on Wednesday, north of the city of Loder, in Abyan province, killing them all, the official told Agence France Presse.

A lone French yacht carrying activists hoping to run the Israeli blockade on Gaza was on Thursday blocked in Crete by the Greek coast guard when it stopped to refuel, an organizer said.

"The Dignite/Al Karama was taken to Sitia in Crete by the Greek coast guard after being stopped in a nearby port while it was refueling," Claude Leostic told Agence France Presse by telephone from Paris.

The United States on Wednesday warned the Palestinians against seeking U.N. recognition of a future state not first defined in talks with Israel, as a top Palestinian official met with U.S. diplomats.

"We don't see a contradiction between the efforts being exerted to revive the peace process and our bid to go to the U.N.," chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat told reporters after his talks at the U.S. State Department.