President Moncef Marzouki on Saturday said a travel ban on Tunisians suspected of corruption must be lifted to help shore up the ailing economy and bolster national reconciliation after the 2011 uprising.

"We must strive to remove immediately these restrictions in order to set up a mechanism of reconciliation," Marzouki said of a ban that affects an estimated 0.4 percent of the country's businessmen.

Israeli settlers and Palestinians in the northern West Bank hurled stones at each other on Saturday after the settlers marched into the village of Burin, witnesses said.

One villager was slightly hurt in the hand by a stone and another passed out from tear gas fired by troops trying to separate the two sides, an Agence France Presse journalist said.

Tunisian Foreign Minister Othmane Jarandi told Agence France Presse on Saturday that some 800 Tunisians are fighting in Islamist rebel ranks in Syria and said the country would work to repatriate its citizens taken prisoner there.

"We don't have exact numbers, since several people left the country illegally, but the most accurate estimate is a maximum of 800," fighting in Syria, he said.

Egypt's interior minister said on Saturday police arrested three members of an al-Qaida-linked cell in an alleged transnational plot to bomb a Western embassy and other targets in the country.

The suspects were arrested with explosives intended to be used to bomb a Western embassy after an investigation showed threads in Pakistan, Iran and Algeria, Mohamed Ibrahim said at a news conference.

Egyptian authorities on Saturday released the founder of one of the key youth movements behind the 2011 uprising after he was held overnight, a judicial source told Agence France Presse.

Ahmed Maher of the April 6 movement was arrested on Friday in Cairo airport where he had landed from Vienna.

At least 41 people were killed and 100 injured Saturday when two explosive-laden cars blew up in a small Turkish town near the Syrian border, as Ankara swiftly pointed the finger at Syria.

In the wake of the bombing, the deadliest attack in Turkey since the beginning of the conflict in neighboring Syria, Turkish Interior Minister Muammer Guler revealed to national TRT television that the people and the organization who carried out this attack have been identified.

A suicide bomber targeted the home of a senior Iraqi intelligence officer north of Baghdad on Saturday, killing three people, while three more died in other attacks, officials said.

The bomber detonated a small tanker truck at the home of police Brigadier General Ismail al-Juburi, a senior officer for Nineveh province, killing his son, nephew and sister-in-law -- and wounding 21 others, police and a doctor said.

Syrian troops fought rebels on Saturday in a bid to take back a key supply route linking the center of the country to Aleppo in the north, a monitoring group said.

"Fierce battles raged pitting troops against rebels. Regime troops fought to reopen the road linking Hama to Aleppo," Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman told Agence France Presse.

A high-ranking Russian diplomatic source said on Saturday it is was highly unlikely that a proposed international peace conference on Syria could be held this month because of differences over who should take part.

"It is unlikely before the end of May," said the source who participated in talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and visiting British Prime Minister David Cameron on Friday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will visit Russia for talks with President Vladimir Putin, officials said Saturday, amid concerns Moscow may be about to deliver advanced missiles to Syria.

Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed the visit to Agence France Presse, but declined to give details, although he told the Interfax news agency it was being planned for next week.