A senior U.N. official urged authorities in the central Syrian city of Homs Monday to release political prisoners and allow peaceful demonstrations.

Homs has been hard hit in violent clashes between anti-government protests and pro-government security forces. Last week, at least 15 civilians were "summarily executed" there by regime forces, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Yemen's longtime strongman, who resigned in February in the face of a bloody year-long uprising against his rule, has undergone "routine" tests and "minor operations," his party announced on Monday.

Saleh "was admitted to a hospital run by the Republican Guard (elite troops under the command of his son Ahmed) for routine tests on Sunday, and has left the facility," General People's Congress deputy secretary general Sultan al-Barakani told Agence France Presse.

Al-Qaida militants on Monday claimed they raked with gunfire a convoy carrying four U.S. military advisers in Hudaida, but American officials said they had no such personnel in the west Yemen port city.

Al-Qaida said in a statement that jihadists had opened fire on Sunday on two cars carrying four American military advisers who were in the Red Sea city on a training mission with the Yemeni Coast Guard.

Palestinian security forces arrested 10 members of the Islamic Jihad in the Jenin refugee camp on Monday, a local leader of the radical movement said.

Ghassan Sa'adi, head of the Islamic Jihad in the Jenin refugee camp, located in the occupied West Bank, told Agence France Presse he did not know why they had been detained.

Campaigning for Egypt's landmark presidential election ended on Monday, wrapping up an unprecedented exercise in democracy made possible by the 2011 popular uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak.

According to the electoral rules laid down by the Supreme Presidential Election Commission, the dozen candidates cannot give any media interviews or make public appearances until polls close on Thursday after the two-day election.

Syrian forces ambushed and killed nine army deserters in a north Damascus suburb on Monday, a human rights watchdog said, as NATO ruled out military action against the regime of President Bashar Assad.

The latest violence in Syria comes after a rocket-propelled grenade exploded on Sunday near U.N. observers in a Damascus suburb, and at least 48 people were killed elsewhere in the country.

A Yemeni soldier packing powerful explosives under his uniform blew himself up in the middle of an army battalion in Sanaa Monday, killing 96 troops and wounding around 300, a military official and medics said.

The suicide attack was the deadliest in the country's capital since newly-elected President Abdrabuh Mansour Hadi pledged to oust al-Qaida militants from Yemen's mostly lawless and restive southern and eastern provinces.

A rocket-propelled grenade exploded near a team of U.N. observers in a Damascus suburb on Sunday, the military said, as clashes between regime troops and armed rebels raged in and around the Syrian capital and at least 21 people were killed across the country.

No one was hurt in the Douma blast, which came as U.N. truce mission head Major General Robert Mood and peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous were leading a team of observers around the north Damascus suburb, an Agence France Presse correspondent at the scene said.

The United Nations said on Sunday that 480 Palestinian refugees have fled Syria to Jordan since the start of a revolt against President Bashar Assad's regime last year.

"The U.N. Relief and Works Agency have registered 480 Palestinian refugees who have sought refuge in Jordan since the beginning of the crisis in Syria," UNRWA spokeswoman, Anwar Abu Sakina, told AFP.

Ankara on Sunday reprimanded an Iraqi rally against its consulate in Basra, where protesters burnt Turkish flags after Turkey refused to hand over their fugitive vice president, Anatolia reported.

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu condemned "the ugly behavior against the Turkish flag in a demo apparently manipulated by impertinent individuals," in a phone conversation with his Iraqi counterpart Hoshyar Zebari.