Jordan said on Sunday it was probing clashes between opposition Islamist demonstrators and government loyalists in a northern city, where dozens, including police, were wounded.

"The government is investigating the clashes that erupted Friday in Mafraq, where citizens and policemen have been attacked," government spokesman Rakan Majali said in published remarks.

In his traditional Christmas message on Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI called for an end to the bloodshed in Syria and said he hoped this year's Arab revolts would aid the "common good."

"Let us turn our gaze anew to the grotto of Bethlehem. The Child whom we contemplate is our salvation! He has brought to the world a universal message of reconciliation and peace," he told thousands of pilgrims in the Vatican.

Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya will begin a tour on Sunday, his office said, his first exit from Gaza since Israel and Egypt imposed a siege in 2007.

Sources in his office told AFP that Haniya would visit Egypt and Sudan, after which he plans to go to Qatar, Turkey, Tunisia, and Bahrain.

Egypt's judiciary decided on Sunday to free blogger and activist Alaa Abdul Fattah, who has spent the past two months in custody, his sister said.

Mona Abdul Fattah announced on Twitter that a court had decided to "free Alaa," who had been remanded in custody on October 30.

Hundreds of Christian faithful, defying lashing rains and wind, filled the ancient Bethlehem church that marks Jesus' traditional birthplace for Christmas Day Mass on Sunday, even as a blast in a Nigerian church shattered the holiday's message of peace on earth.

Worshippers, dressed in their holiday best and some in the traditional attire of foreign lands, rushed into the Church of the Nativity under the cover of umbrellas, leaving Manger Square, with its 50-foot-tall (15-meter-tall) Christmas tree, deserted. The sanctuary was packed, and the overflow crowd waited eagerly in an arched corridor for a chance to enter.

The opposition Syrian National Council appealed Sunday for the Arab League to immediately send observers to the besieged city of Homs and other hotspots of a bloody crackdown on dissent, as activists said security forces killed 10 civilians across the country.

The call came a day before a first group of Arab League observers is set to arrive in Syria to begin monitoring a deal the 22-member bloc agreed with the government in Damascus aimed at ending nine months of violence.

Sudan's army killed a key rebel leader from the Darfur region Sunday, state media reported, three days after anti-government forces said they had begun advancing on the capital Khartoum.

"The Sudanese army announced that they killed Khalil Ibrahim in fighting today in west Wadbanda, North Kordofan," the official Sudan News Agency (SUNA) said.

The surviving children of Libya's dead dictator Moammar Gadhafi are determined to destabilize the country, National Transitional Council chief Mustafa Abdel Jalil said on Saturday.

"It is true that Moammar Gadhafi and his children will no longer have a place in the future Libya, but they are still determined to destabilize it and cause many concerns," he said without elaborating.

Bahrain authorities on Saturday dropped charges relating to freedom of expression in 34 cases linked to anti-regime protests in February and March, the official Bahrain News Agency said.

BNA cited Prosecutor General Ali al-Bouainain as saying the move affected 343 individual suspects, but that some of these accused of other charges "including acts of violence and sabotage" would still be prosecuted.

The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Fuad Twal calls for reconciliation in Syria, Egypt, Iraq and North Africa in his Christmas homily to be delivered in Bethlehem later on Saturday.

Twal, the most senior Roman Catholic in the Middle East, urges "the return of calm and reconciliation in Syria, in Egypt, in Iraq and in North Africa" in the text of a speech published ahead of delivery at midnight mass in the place of Christ's birth.