At least 25 soldiers have been killed in a friendly fire incident and clashes with militants linked to al-Qaida in south Yemen, security officials said on Sunday.

The officials said some of the soldiers were killed in a strike by the Yemeni air force that mistakenly hit a school in the southern town of Zinjibar.

Syrian authorities said Sunday they have restored law and order to a rebellious central town after hunting down armed "terrorists" holed up inside.

State-run news agency SANA said life is back to normal in Rastan after five days of intense fighting between the military and forces opposed to President Bashar Assad.

At least 10,000 missiles are unaccounted for in Libya, a senior NATO official has admitted according to a German media report on Sunday, amid fears the weapons could fall into the hands of al-Qaida.

News weekly Der Spiegel reported on its website that Admiral Giampaolo di Paola, who chairs the committee of NATO military chiefs, held a secret briefing for German MPs on Monday, in which he expressed the alliance's concerns.

The Palestinians need to show flexibility and get back to the negotiating table, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said in an interview with Egypt's Al-Hayat TV released Saturday.

Asked about the Palestinians' quest for full recognition at the United Nations, the top U.S. diplomat appeared to try to downplay the importance of the ongoing effort, which Washington opposes and has promised to veto.

Venezuela's firebrand President Hugo Chavez on Saturday reiterated his support for ousted Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, calling them "brothers."

"I ask God for the life of our brother Gadhafi... No one knows where Gadhafi is, I think he went to the desert," Chavez told official television VTV.

A man claiming to be Moussa Ibrahim, spokesman for Moammar Gadhafi, denied on Saturday claims he had been captured by forces of the country's new regime outside of the deposed Libyan leader's hometown of Sirte.

"This information is a lie and does not reflect reality," the man said in a live telephone interview with Syrian-based Arrai television, which has become a conduit for declarations by Gadhafi and other elements of his former regime.

Five Yemeni soldiers were killed on Saturday in an attack on the southern city of Zinjibar during an operation aimed at rooting out militants linked to Al-Qaeda, a medical source said.

The fighting comes a day after one of the extremist group's top leaders in the Arabian Peninsula country, U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaqi, was killed in an apparent U.S. drone strike.

Egypt's military rulers agreed on Saturday to amend a controversial electoral law following threats of a poll boycott by dozens of political parties and a rally in Cairo's Tahrir Square for reforms.

The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which took power when president Hosni Mubarak was ousted in February, agreed to amend the new law to allow political parties to field candidates in the one-third of seats that had previously been reserved for independent candidates, the official MENA agency reported.

Four workers were killed and two employees injured in a gas pipe explosion on Saturday at Kuwait's largest refinery of Mina al-Ahmadi, Kuwait national refiner said.

The explosion took place at the Gas Liquefaction Plant at the refinery during maintenance works, Kuwait National Petroleum Co (KNPC) said in a statement cited by the official KUNA news agency.

Egypt's military chief of staff Sami Enan met party leaders on Saturday, a day after protesters converged on Cairo's central Tahrir Square to demand reforms.

The meeting came hours after scuffles and stone-throwing broke out in Tahrir Square as army troops attempted to remove protesters who wanted to stage a sit-in.