A senior commander in Syria's powerful Islamist Ahrar al-Sham rebel group was killed Saturday night in a suicide bombing in Idlib province, a monitoring group said.

Yemen's warring parties held a new session of peace talks in Kuwait on Saturday under pressure to firm up a fragile ceasefire that went into effect on April 11.

"The meeting has started," Charbel Raji, spokesman for U.N. envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, told AFP, without providing details.

At least 27 civilians were killed Saturday in regime bombardment on rebel-held areas across Syria, a monitor and local sources said, in the latest deadly violence despite a ceasefire deal.

Twelve civilians were killed in Aleppo, according to a local civil defense official, and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 13 others died in shelling on the rebel town of Douma, east of Damascus.

An Egyptian court postponed on Saturday its verdict and sentence in the trial of ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, who is charged with spying for Qatar.

The head judge of the criminal court said the verdict was postponed to "May 7 to continue consultations," in brief remarks aired on television.

Yemeni forces backed by air power from the Saudi-led Arab coalition launched an operation Saturday to drive Al-Qaida fighters out of a southern provincial capital, military officials said.

Forces loyal to President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi in Abyan province advanced towards Zinjibar and the neighboring town of Jaar, the sources said.

Israel scrambled fighter planes Saturday to intercept an unidentified passenger aircraft entering its airspace and escorted it to land at Tel Aviv, the Israeli military told AFP.

Israeli media reported that the aircraft turned out to be an Air Sinai flight from Cairo to Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport.

Libya's Vice President Ahmed Maetig has expressed hope that the European Union will enter into an agreement with his country similar to that between the EU and Turkey restricting the flow of migrants to Europe.

Maetig made the appeal while in Rome meeting with Italy's Interior Minister Angelino Alfano.

As peace offerings go, prefabricated metal huts on a sand dune may seem unimpressive, but they are what the Islamist Palestinian movement Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip, has chosen.

Hamas has set up dozens of new border posts and military checkpoints along the enclave's border with Egypt in an attempt to improve relations with Cairo after three years of acrimony.

Egypt has arrested dozens of activists ahead of an anti-government demonstration planned for Monday, a group of lawyers said.

The group published a list of 59 people they say were detained since Thursday, arrested at cafes and at their homes in Cairo, adding "the arrests continue".

Syria's fragile ceasefire is in grave peril, U.N. President Barack Obama and the U.N.'s special envoy warned Friday, as violence surged in the war-ravaged country's second city Aleppo.

The truce "is still in effect, but it is in great trouble if we don't act quickly", the United Nations' top envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, told reporters in Geneva, where he is mediating faltering peace talks.