The annual summit of Arab monarchs in the Gulf opened in Manama on Monday with a call for closer economic integration and unity in the face of the turmoil which has swept much of the Middle East.

King Hamad of host country Bahrain called for the Gulf Cooperation Council to provide "a security umbrella for its peoples" and urged "economic complementarity" between its six member states.

Kuwait's appeals court Monday upheld a life term on two police officers convicted of torturing a citizen to death at a police station two years ago.

The court also confirmed jailing three officers for 16 years each, a fourth for 15 years and a fifth for two years and ordered their dismissal from the police force.

Warplanes carried out several strikes on Monday on rebel-held areas in the Eastern Ghouta region near Damascus, where fresh clashes pitting insurgents and troops erupted, said a monitoring group.

The area east of Damascus is home to some of the rebel Free Syrian Army's fiercest and best organized groups. Several towns in Eastern Ghouta have become key flashpoints in Syria's conflict, as the violence draws ever nearer to the capital.

The Lebanese lawyer of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali on Monday blasted as "illegal" the auction of the deposed Tunisian dictator's assets and threatened to take the case to the U.N. Human Rights Council.

"The Tunisian authorities have committed an illegal act and we will take this matter to the United Nations Human Rights Council," Akram Azouri told AFP.

Jihadists overran large parts of an Alawite village in the central Syrian province of Hama on Monday in fighting that killed at least 30 combatants, a monitoring group said.

Alongside other radical Islamist groups, al-Nusra Front seized parts of the village of Maan, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, adding at least 11 rebel fighters and 20 regime troops were killed.

Two suspected U.S. drone strikes killed six al-Qaida militants in Yemen on Monday, including a Jordanian, government officials said.

The first "drone strike targeted a vehicle killing two al-Qaida members -- a Yemeni and a Jordanian" in Manaseh of central Bayda province, a local government official said, requesting anonymity.

Syrian troops have deployed bombs containing a killer gas while fighting rebels in the central city of Homs, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and activists said on Monday.

"Activists in Homs say that six rebels died on Sunday night on the Khaldiyeh-Bayada front-line because they inhaled odorless gas and white smoke," said the Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a network of activists, lawyers and doctors to document Syria's raging conflict.

A "terrorist" group attacked the rebel-held town of Halfaya in central Syria killing women and children, news agency SANA said on Monday, rebuffing claims the deaths were a result of a regime air strike.

The opposition Syrian National Coalition meanwhile blamed the "criminal regime" of President Bashar Assad for committing what it described as a "crime against humanity" in the town.

Peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi Monday held talks with Syria's president on the "worrying" situation in the country.

"I had the honor to meet the president and as usual we exchanged views on the many steps to be taken in the future," Brahimi told reporters at his Damascus hotel, a day after he arrived to launch a fresh bid to end the conflict roiling Syria.

Israel's ex-foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, who quit this month after been charged with breach of trust five weeks ahead of a general election, may have the charges against him toughened, the justice ministry said Sunday.

Media reports said police will question Lieberman, head of the ultranationalist Yisrael Beitenu party, this week in an inquiry relating to the promotion of Zeev Ben Arieh, Israel's former ambassador to Belarus.