An Israeli court has ordered a group of Jewish settlers to leave a house in the southern West Bank city of Hebron after ruling that their claim to ownership was false, court documents showed.

In a hearing at Jerusalem District Court, Judge Ram Winograd ruled late last week that the settlers' argument that they had legally purchased the property, "does not hold water."

U.N. envoy Kofi Annan on Sunday asked the Damascus regime and the opposition to immediately halt violence and the use of heavy weapons.

"I urge all forces whether governmental, opposition or others to put down their weapons and work with the United Nations monitors to consolidate the fragile cessation of violence in all its forms," Annan said in a statement.

A French man working for the International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) was kidnapped in Yemen Saturday on his way to the port city of Hudaida, an ICRC spokeswoman told AFP Sunday.

"We haven't had any contact with his captors. We are very concerned for his health and well-being," spokeswoman Marie-Servane Desjonqueres said, adding "We are hoping for his immediate and unconditional release."

Two U.N. observers set up base Sunday in the restive city of Homs a day after an advance team of monitors toured flashpoint areas to assess a shaky truce, a mission spokesman told AFP.

The official, Neeraj Singh, also said other members of the eight-member U.N. team of advance observers mandated to monitor the April 12 ceasefire were pursuing field visits elsewhere in Syria on Sunday.

Seventeen suspected Al-Qaida militants were killed in an air raid that struck one of their hideouts in the southern town of Loder, the defense ministry said on Sunday.

The late Sunday attack brought to 57 the number of Islamist insurgents reportedly killed in south Yemen over the past three days, according to the defense ministry. Agence France Presse could not independently verify the toll.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki arrived in Tehran on Sunday for two days of meetings with Iranian leaders and senior officials on various bilateral issues, Iran's IRNA state news agency reported.

The visit notably comes ahead of an important May 23 meeting to be hosted in Baghdad between Iran and the P5+1 group of world powers on Tehran's disputed nuclear program.

The rebel Free Syrian Army hailed the United Nations Security Council vote on Saturday to send 300 observers to monitor a ceasefire in Syria and said it was committed to the truce.

"We salute the dispatch of new observers," FSA spokesman Colonel Kassem Saadeddine told Agencce France Presse through a Skype call from Homs province.

France and German welcomed the decision by the United Nations Security Council on Saturday to send U.N. observers to monitor the fragile ceasefire in Syria, warning Damascus to end the violence there.

The two countries reacted after the Council unanimously passed a resolution allowing a 300-strong ceasefire monitoring mission in Syria despite the strong doubts of many Western nations.

Egypt's constitutional court refused on Saturday to rule on a parliamentary draft bill barring former regime figures from standing in next month's presidential election, judicial sources said.

The court, asked by the ruling military to decide on the bill's legality, said it could only consider a law after it comes into effect, the sources said.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi is expected in Tunisia Monday for a two-day visit, the foreign ministry said in a statement.

"The visit will be an opportunity to review means of strengthening bilateral ties and discuss regional and international issues of common interest," the statement said Saturday.