An Arab League advance team arrived in Syria on Thursday to launch a hard-won observer mission to oversee a plan to end nine months of bloodshed after the opposition accused regime forces of "massacring" hundreds in two days.

Meanwhile, there was no let-up in the killing, with human rights activists reporting at least 21 more people killed and clashes between defectors and regular troops in flashpoints Homs and Idlib.

Prime Minister Kamal al-Ganzouri called on Egyptians Thursday to set aside their political differences for the sake of the economy, warning that the country's finances were deteriorating alarmingly.

The military-appointed prime minister told a press conference that much of the aid promised by donor countries had yet to arrive, while the country suffered an outflow of $9 billion in the past few months.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki vowed on Thursday that the bombers would not be allowed to have any impact on the political process, after a wave of attacks in Baghdad that killed 57 people.

"The timing of these crimes and their locations confirm once again to any doubters the political nature of the goals that those criminals want to achieve," Maliki said in a statement.

A veteran Sudanese military intelligence officer was heading to Cairo on Thursday for preparatory meetings to lead an Arab League observer mission aiming to end nine months of violence in Syria.

General Mohammed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi was named on Tuesday to head the team, a day after Syrian President Bashar Assad's embattled regime agreed after weeks of stalling to accept the observers.

Israel has lashed out at Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas for meeting a former woman prisoner who lured an Israeli teen to his death, accusing him of "putting murderers on a pedestal."

Palestinian Amna Muna was sentenced to life behind bars for seducing a teenage boy through an Internet chatroom who was later shot dead by militants in 2001, but was freed in October under terms of a prisoner swap deal.

The United Arab Emirates said Thursday it is revoking the citizenship of six naturalized citizens because the government says they pose a threat to national security.

The unexpected order was issued by President Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan earlier this month, according to the announcement by state news agency WAM. The men were granted Emirati citizenship between 1976 and 1986.

Six al-Qaida suspects were killed overnight during shelling and clashes in the restive southern Yemeni province of Abyan, a local official said on Thursday.

Five died when their positions in Bajdar, on the outskirts of the provincial capital Zinjibar, were shelled in an attack that "might have come from U.S. naval forces" in the Gulf of Aden, the official said.

Iran on Thursday rejected Gulf Arab leaders' accusation of interference in their affairs, accusing them of parroting "baseless" U.S. charges against Iran while ignoring U.S. "espionage" against Iran.

"In this statement, some fabricated and undocumented claims made by American officials have been pointed to," the state television website quoted foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast as saying, in reference to U.S. charges of an assassination plot against the Saudi ambassador in Washington.

The Gulf state of Kuwait, home to 105,000 stateless people, may grant citizenship to 34,000 of them, the head of a government authority overseeing their affairs has said.

"We will consider making a recommendation to grant citizenship to 34,000 stateless," head of the central agency for illegal residents, Saleh al-Fadhalah, told state-run Kuwait TV late on Wednesday.

A wave of attacks in Baghdad Thursday killed 57 people as Iraq faced a political crisis, with its vice president accused of running death squads and the premier warning he could break off power-sharing.

The apparently coordinated blasts, which left 176 people wounded, were the first major sign of violence in a crisis that has threatened the country's fragile political truce and heightened sectarian tensions just days after U.S. forces completed their withdrawal from Iraq.