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.

At least 22 people were killed on Wednesday in clashes in the southern Syrian province of Daraa, where the protests against President Bashar al-Assad's regime erupted in March, a rights group said, as U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon expressed concern about the mounting death toll.

"Twenty-two people -- six deserters, a civilian and 15 members of the armed forces and security forces -- were killed and several dozen civilians were wounded in their homes," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The United States on Wednesday warned of new international measures to halt Syria's bloody crackdown on protests after reports that more than 200 people had been "massacred" in two days.

The White House said if Damascus did not fully implement an Arab League plan to contain the violence, "the international community will take additional steps to pressure the Assad regime to stop its crackdown."

Egypt's foreign minister on Wednesday slammed foreign "interference" following impassioned comments by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denouncing the stripping and beating of a female protester.

"Egypt will not accept any interference in its domestic affairs," Mohammed Amr told reporters.

Palestinian factions meeting in Cairo were mulling on Wednesday ways to reactivate their national parliament, which has been paralyzed since 2007 following the split between the West Bank and Gaza.

All the main factions, led by the former rivals Hamas and Fatah, are meeting in the Egyptian capital to thrash out ways of implementing a reconciliation deal that was signed in May but has never been implemented.