The opposition Syrian National Council warned on Monday of a possible "massacre" of hundreds of young men rounded up by security forces in a town near Damascus.

It voiced "fears over a possible liquidation of hundreds of young men that Syrian security services have gathered in a public square in Rankous," 40 kilometers north of the capital, in a statement received by Agence France Presse.

The head of the Hamas government in Gaza, Ismail Haniya, arrived in Qatar on Monday, beginning a regional tour that is also expected to take in Kuwait, Bahrain and Iran.

The official Qatari News Agency said Haniya's visit to the Gulf emirate will "last several days," while diplomats said he will leave Doha on Saturday, after leading the main weekly Muslim prayers at noon on Friday.

Egypt's ruling military on Monday laid out the rules governing the country's first presidential elections since a popular uprising ousted veteran strongman Hosni Mubarak.

Only Egyptian nationals born to Egyptian parents and who do not hold dual citizenship can qualify for candidacy, according to the new election law issued by military ruler Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi.

Former pro-Gadhafi fighter Milad Mohammed Youssef lifts his shirt to reveal scars from what he says are cigarette burns and chain beatings, claims his jailer denies happened at his prison.

Youssef, a prison inmate in the western city of Misrata, says he has been held in his small cell at the army-run facility since October 28, five weeks after being captured.

Representatives of Syria's Kurdish community are divided on the issue of seeking a foreign military intervention to help topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is trying to crush a popular uprising.

NATO-led forces, which carried out air strikes in Libya last year after popular protests gave way to an armed uprising, were instrumental in long-time strongman Moammar Gadhafi’s fall.

Disagreement on Syria is one underlying cause of the current diplomatic row between Iraq and Turkey, analysts say, but crucial economic ties are likely to prevent a serious escalation.

Despite improving relations and rising trade between their two countries in recent years, the rhetoric between Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan has become heated in recent weeks as Baghdad grappled with a political crisis that has stoked sectarian tensions.

The Syrian authorities have agreed to an offer by Russia to have informal talks in Moscow with opposition representatives to resolve the crisis in the country, the Russian foreign ministry said Monday, an offer swiftly rejected by the opposition.

Russia had suggested to both the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and the opposition that they should meet in Moscow for "informal contacts" without any preconditions, the foreign ministry said.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe is to head to New York on Tuesday to press the U.N. Security Council into taking action over the Syrian regime's "crimes against humanity", his ministry said.

Juppe will seek "to persuade the Security Council to assume its responsibilities faced with the Syrian regime's worsening crimes against humanity," ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said on Monday.

Security forces have executed Free Syrian Army colonel Hussein Harmush, a founder of the rebel group made up of soldiers who defected, the Syrian League for Human Rights said on Monday.

"An air force intelligence unit last week carried out a sentence to shoot dead officer Hussein Harmush," the non-governmental group said in a statement.

Iran has developed laser-guided artillery rounds designed to home in on stationary or moving targets at a distance of up to 20 kilometers (12 miles), Defense Minister Ahmed Vahidi told state media Monday.

State television showed images of artillery being fired, saying it showed the precision-guided ammunition in action.