Islamist militants armed with rockets and grenades attacked a Pakistani police station before dawn on Wednesday, killing two officers and wounding seven others, police said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the assault in Darbaan Kalan, west of Dera Ismail Khan, a flashpoint for sectarian violence in the northwest, and denied they were in peace talks with the government.

The death toll from a fresh surge of violence in Syrian flashpoints has risen to 33, rights activists said Wednesday, adding that among the dead are six children and teenagers and five army defectors.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in a statement that 28 civilians were killed on Tuesday by security force gunfire, in addition to the five defectors.

Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh arrived unexpectedly in Riyadh early Wednesday for the signing of a Gulf-sponsored power-transfer deal, an official here told Agence France Presse.

Saleh's visit came after the U.N.'s Yemen envoy said on Tuesday a deal aimed at ending months of political deadlock had been approved both by the opposition and by the president.

Pakistan's U.S. envoy has been forced to step down as the government launches an investigation into claims that he sought U.S. help, allegedly at the president's behest, to forestall a feared military coup.

Ambassador Husain Haqqani, a close aide of President Asif Ali Zardari, has played a key role in helping Pakistan's government navigate turbulent relations with Washington which nosedived over the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

The United States said Tuesday it has placed a suspected Saudi member of an Islamist militant group based in Lebanon on its list of international terrorists.

The State Department said it had designated Ibrahim Suleiman Hamad al-Hablain, known as Abu Jabal, a "specially designated global terrorist," a classification that bars Americans from doing business with him or on his behalf.

Tunisia entered a new era on Tuesday with the inaugural session of its first-ever democratically elected constituent assembly, 10 months after a popular uprising ended years of autocracy.

The 217-member assembly, the first elected body of the Arab Spring, was expected to confirm a deal whereby the Islamist Ennahda party and two other parties split the country's top three jobs between themselves.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said on Monday that there is no plan for military intervention in Syria because the opposition to President Bashar al-Assad's regime wants to proceed peacefully.

"The situation in Syria is different (from Libya). We have no intention of military intervention because the (opposition) Syrian National Council prefers to continue with peaceful efforts," Juppe told a press conference in Kuwait.

Gunmen kidnapped two foreigners, including a Frenchwoman, and their Yemeni driver from a Red Cross vehicle in the southern province of Lahij on Tuesday, government and security officials said.

"A French woman of Moroccan origin was kidnapped along with another foreigner and their Yemeni driver in the town of Msaimeer," around 70 kilometers (40 miles) from Huta, the capital of Lahij, a security official said.

Syria, isolated over its deadly protest crackdown, hopes to cash in on support from neighbors Iraq and Lebanon to counter Arab sanctions that threaten to choke its economy.

"We know how to manage when the going gets rough, because we have been facing sanctions for years," a Syrian official told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.

Police have detained 15 people suspected of having ties to the al-Qaida extremist network in central Turkey, Anatolia news agency reported on Tuesday.

The suspects were arrested in simultaneous raids at several addresses in central Anatolian province of Konya, Anatolia said.