Palestinian leaders decided on Saturday to seek sessions of the U.N. Security Council and the Arab League, hoping for action to halt Israeli settlement.

A statement by the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization said continued settlement growth in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem was liable "to destroy all chances of a peace process and the two-state solution."

Two Yemeni soldiers and two suspected al-Qaida militants were killed in clashes overnight near the restive southern city of Zinjibar, a military source said on Saturday.

Three soldiers and four members of the Partisans of Sharia, an al-Qaida-linked insurgent group that took over most of Zinjibar earlier this year, were wounded in the fighting, the source said.

Hundreds of Kurds staged a violent protest Saturday in southeastern Turkey after police said two Kurdish rebels had been killed in a gun battle after a raid on their hideout.

The protestors demonstrated near where the two alleged members of the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) died earlier in the center of Diyarbakir, the main city of the majority Kurdish region.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki declared "Iraq Day" on Saturday to mark the end of a pact allowing U.S. forces to stay in the country, two weeks after they left and with Iraq mired in a political row.

Speaking at a ceremony at the al-Shaab stadium complex in central Baghdad, Maliki said December 31 was "a feast for all Iraqis" and marked "the day Iraq became sovereign".

The rebel Free Syrian Army is suspending operations against regime forces during the mission of monitors deployed in Syria to implement an Arab League peace plan, its chief told Agence France Presse on Saturday.

"We have decided to stop all the operations, except those for self-defense," dissident Colonel Riyadh Asaad told AFP in a telephone interview from his base in Turkey.

Sectarian clashes broke out in the southern Egyptian province of Assiut after a Christian student posted a drawing of the Muslim prophet on the Internet, officials said on Saturday.

The clashes, which spread to three villages, saw several Christian homes burned and left five police officers injured, a security official told Agence France Presse.

Two Yemeni soldiers and two suspected al-Qaida militants were killed in clashes overnight near the restive southern city of Zinjibar, a military source said on Saturday.

Three soldiers and four members of the Partisans of Sharia, an al-Qaida-linked insurgent group that took over most of Zinjibar earlier this year, were wounded in the fighting, the source said.

The United Nations said Friday it expects Syrian authorities to grant unfettered access and complete cooperation to Arab observers as bloodshed continues amid a crackdown on protesters.

"It is critical that the observer mission be given unhindered access and full cooperation by the government of Syria, and that its independence and impartiality be fully preserved," U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said.

The Syrian National Council (SNC) opposition group has signed a political agreement with another faction of dissidents laying the ground rules for a "transitional period" should the regime be toppled, a statement said.

The SNC, a major umbrella of factions opposed to Syrian President Bashar Assad, signed the deal with the National Coordination Body for Democratic Change in Syria, NCB chief Hassan Abdel Azim told Agence France Presse.

Jordan has chosen 12 judges and military experts to join an Arab League observer mission in Syria, a newspaper reported on Saturday.

The semi-official Ad-Dustour newspaper quoted Information Minister Rakan Majali as saying "the final list of names of the Jordanian team expected to join the observers' mission in Syria is ready."