Al-Qaida has claimed it detonated two bombs outside the U.S. embassy in Sanaa, killing several guards, a U.S.-based monitoring group said on Saturday.

In a message on Twitter, al-Qaida's media branch said its fighters set off the explosive devices at an entrance to the embassy on Thursday night, according to SITE Intelligence Group.

Islamic State group jihadists launched a double attack Saturday on a Kurdish-controlled post on the Syrian-Turkish border for the first time, prompting fierce clashes in the adjacent town of Kobane.

Kurdish officials and a Britain-based monitor said the two IS suicide attacks targeting the border post were launched from Turkish soil, claims that Turkish officials dismissed as "lies."

An Egyptian court dismissed Saturday a murder charge against Hosni Mubarak over the deaths of protesters during the 2011 uprising against him, sparking celebrations among supporters but fury from the former president's opponents.

Mubarak, who ruled for three decades until he was driven from office, was also acquitted of a corruption charge but will remain in jail on a three-year sentence in a separate graft case. 

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman suggested Friday that Israel should offer "economic incentives" to encourage Arab Israelis to leave the country and relocate to a future Palestinian state.

Arab Israelis "who decide their identity is Palestinian can relinquish their Israeli citizenship and become citizens of the future Palestinian state," Lieberman said in manifesto of his Israel Beitenu party.

A pro-Palestinian Italian activist was shot and seriously wounded by Israeli gunfire during a Friday clash in the northern West Bank, medics and his movement said.

Palestinian security sources said Patrick Corsi, a 30-year-old member of the International Solidarity Movement, was shot during the weekly demonstration at Kafr Qaddum, west of Nablus.

A Hizbullah affiliated website said Friday that an Iranian elite unit commander led the anti-jihadist counter-attack in Iraq after the Islamic State group made major advances in June.

Major General Qassem Suleimani landed in Baghdad on June 10, hours after the IS overran the Iraqi city of Mosul, "leading a group of Lebanese and Iranian military experts", according to the pro-Tehran Al-Manar TV website.

An anti-Islamist former Libyan general, Khalifa Haftar, said Friday he has given himself two weeks to take Benghazi and three months to recapture the capital Tripoli.

The strongman, who is allied to the Libyan parliament, has been battling Islamist militias who took control of the war-torn country's biggest cities this summer after their defeat in elections.

Hundreds of Jordanians joined a rally Friday organized by the Muslim Brotherhood to denounce Israeli plans to enshrine in law the country's status as the national Jewish homeland.

An estimated 1,500 protesters set off from the Husseini mosque in downtown Amman holding up signs saying "Al-Aqsa is in danger".

Some 200 Syrian refugees protesting in Athens on Friday asked to be allowed access to other European countries, fearing deteriorating conditions in crisis-hit Greece.

"Crisis-hit Greece alone cannot support the weight of accommodating war refugees," said Nander Halbuni, a representative of the Syrians who have been camping on Syntagma Square in central Athens for over a week.

A French-Moroccan youth has been jailed for two years for "advocating terrorism" by flying what looked liked the black flag of the Islamic State jihadist group, a news website said Friday

Abdelmalik el-Makrini, 18, was on holiday in Morocco when he was arrested in August for flying a flag on which is written "There is no god but God, and Mohammed is his prophet," the Tel Quel site said.