Saboteurs bombed an Egyptian gas pipeline in the Sinai Peninsula on Monday, sending flames into the sky and cutting supplies to Israel and Jordan, a security official said.

Officials said a car had parked near the pipeline in the Bir al-Abd area, 80 kilometers from the north Sinai town of el-Arish, shortly before the explosion.

Turkey's top diplomat on Sunday recognized Libya's rebel council as the legitimate representative of the Libyan people, as he vowed to do "everything" possible to end the fighting.

Ahmet Davutoglu arrived in Benghazi, giving the National Transitional Council the much sought-after political and economic support of a major regional player and former colonial power.

Egypt's Nabil al-Arabi on Sunday formally replaced his compatriot Amr Moussa as secretary general of the Arab League, state media reported.

On May 15 Foreign Minister Arabi was selected to replace Moussa, whose 10-year tenure was due to expire and who harbors ambitions to run for the Egyptian presidency.

Some 100 Syrian independent figures met in the capital on Sunday to discuss a "third way" for the country, which has been rocked by anti-regime protests for three months, Agence France Presse reported.

It was the second such meeting of its kind in a week, after critics of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad vowed at an unprecedented gathering in Damascus last Monday to press ahead with a peaceful uprising.

Buoyed by French arms drops and intensified NATO air strikes on the regime's frontline armor, Libya's rebel army said it is poised for an offensive that could put it within striking distance of Tripoli.

The rebels' announcement late on Saturday came as a prolonged deadlock on the battlefield prompted mounting pressure from countries outside the NATO-led coalition for a negotiated solution to a conflict that has dragged on for four and a half months.

Thousands of Syrian refugees in Turkey are choosing to return home, although the neighboring country is still sheltering some 10,000 people, Turkish officials said on Sunday.

Some 343 Syrians went back to their country on Saturday, taking the total number of returnees to 5,001, the country's disaster and emergency management agency said on its website.

Switzerland has blocked 27 million francs (31.8 million dollars) worth of assets linked to the Syrian regime, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) said Sunday.

Financial sanctions and travel restrictions were imposed against 23 key players in the Syrian regime in May, including President Bashar al-Assad, intelligence chief Ali Mamlouk and interior minister Mohammad Ibrahim al-Chaar, for their "involvement in the repression against demonstrators."

The Syrian army pressed a crackdown on dissent in the northwest on Sunday making sweeping arrests, as troops deployed in the hotbed central city of Hama, an activist said.

Troops backed by 97 tanks and personnel carriers advanced late Saturday on Kfar Rumma village and made arrests in the district of Jabal al-Zawiyah, said Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The Hamas government in the Gaza Strip on Sunday called on Greece to allow a flotilla of aid ships to set sail for the Israeli-blockaded Palestinian territory.

"We regret the position of Greece, which has responded to international pressure to stop the Freedom Flotilla from sailing," Hamas foreign minister Mohammed Awad told a news conference at Gaza's port.

Gunmen killed five Iraqi policemen in a drive-by shooting at a checkpoint in Anbar province, west of Baghdad, on Sunday, a police officer said.

"At 8:30 am (0530 GMT), gunmen riding in a car and carrying automatic weapons killed five policemen guarding a checkpoint, before fleeing," the officer in the provincial capital Ramadi said.