A wave of more than 25 attacks across Iraq killed 71 people and wounded more than 350 on Saturday and Sunday, security and medical sources said, with the security forces and markets among the targets.

The latest violence brings the number of people killed already this month to 101, according to an Agence France Presse tally.

U.N. and Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi arrived in Cairo on Sunday where he will hold talks with League officials ahead of an expected visit to Damascus, an airport official said.

Brahimi came from New York via Paris for what is his first visit to the region after taking up his appointment in early September as the peace envoy for Syria, replacing former U.N. chief Kofi Annan.

Eight Saudis wanted for alleged links to al-Qaida have handed themselves in to the authorities, the state news agency SPA reported on Sunday.

The surrender was overseen by the families of those wanted and a center headed by Deputy Interior Minister Mohammed bin Nayef, the interior ministry said in a statement carried by SPA.

The Yasser Arafat Foundation said Sunday there was "no need" for more proof the Palestinian leader was poisoned in what appeared to be a stance against French plans to exhume his body.

"Since the formation of this Foundation, it has forcefully held on to the fact that Yasser Arafat died abnormally after being killed by a poison which was unidentified at the time," it said in a statement.

Thirty complaints have been filed against Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, former head of Egypt's army, and his deputy General Sami Anan, for suppressing last year's popular uprising, a judicial source said Sunday.

Anan is also the subject of an additional complaint accusing him of illegally acquiring building plots near Cairo, the source said.

The new U.N.-Arab League envoy for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, has spoken by telephone with Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi and is contemplating a trip to Tehran, an Iranian official told the Mehr news agency on Sunday.

Brahimi, who is embarking on his first Middle East tour since taking over the position last week from Kofi Annan, spoke with Salehi late Saturday, one of Iran's deputy foreign ministers, Abbas Araqchi, was quoted as saying.

Iraq's fugitive Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, a top critic of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, was convicted of murder Sunday and sentenced to death by hanging, in a decision likely to renew political tensions.

Hashemi, tried in absentia, has dismissed all charges against him as politically motivated. A Baghdad court also tried in absentia his secretary and son-in-law Ahmed Qahtan and sentenced him to death.

A series of more than 25 attacks across Iraq killed 56 people and wounded over 250 on Saturday and Sunday, security and medical officials said, with targets including security forces and markets.

The latest violence brings the number of people killed in attacks so far this month to 82, according to an Agence France Presse tally based on security and medical sources.

Syrian government forces bombarded a central neighborhood of Aleppo on Sunday after a day of fierce clashes with rebels who tried to take the regime-controlled district, a watchdog said.

Several houses were destroyed in the shelling of the northern city's Midan district, which is under regime control, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

A rocket fired from Gaza crashed into a house in southern Israel on Sunday, causing heavy damage but not casualties, as two more landed near the city of Beersheva, an Israel police spokesman said.

Spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said one rocket hit a house in Netivot and caused damage to a second, while two others landed near Beersheva, a city of 194,000 people.