Israeli soldiers clashed overnight with Jewish worshipers who tried to enter a religious site in the northern West Bank city of Nablus without permission, the military said on Monday.

The disturbances erupted when scores of religious Jews attempted to visit Joseph's Tomb without authorization shortly after hundreds of others had traveled there on an army-escorted tour.

Iran's top trade official has denied that a public company in Iran, which does not recognize the Jewish state, bought a ship from an Israeli firm as claimed by Washington, local media said on Sunday.

"Based on the laws of the country, any kind of trade or economic transaction with the Zionist regime and its affiliated firms is against the law," the chairman of Iran's Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Mines (ICCIM), Mohammad Nahavandian, was quoted as saying.

Egypt will expel an Iranian diplomat who was briefly detained on suspicion of spying on the North African country for Tehran's intelligence services, security officials said on Sunday.

The officials said the diplomat, who had been released earlier in the day, would be "expelled within 48 hours."

Suspected al-Qaida gunmen have taken control of the south Yemen city of Zinjibar, capital of Abyan province, after heavy fighting with security forces that left 16 dead, an official said on Sunday.

The fighters "were able to gain control of the city of Zinjibar ... and took over all government facilities," except for the headquarters of the 25th mechanized brigade, which is besieged by militants, the security official said.

A Cairo court on Saturday fined ousted president Hosni Mubarak and two ex-ministers $90 million dollars for "damaging the economy" with a telephone and Internet shutdown during Egypt's uprising.

Mubarak, his former prime minister Ahmed Nazif and interior minister Habib al-Adly were jointly "ordered to pay the state 540 million Egyptian pounds from their personal funds," a judicial source said.

Pro-democracy activists in Syria called for fresh protests on Saturday after the alleged torture and killing of a 13-year-old boy by security forces in the flashpoint region of Daraa.

The body of Hamza al-Khatib was returned to his family on Wednesday, following his disappearance after a demonstration on April 29, activists said on their Facebook site, Syrian Revolution 2011.

Egypt on Saturday reopened its Rafah border crossing with Gaza, allowing people to cross freely for the first time in four years, in a move hailed by Hamas but criticized by Israel.

Among the first to cross the reopened border post were two ambulances ferrying patients from the hitherto-blockaded Gaza Strip for treatment in Egypt as well as a minibus carrying a dozen visitors, an Agence France Presse correspondent reported.

Around two thousand Kuwaiti youths took to the streets late Friday, despite an unprecedented security presence, to demand the oil-rich Gulf state's prime minister resign.

The demonstrators chanted repeatedly, "The people want to topple the head" of government, a common refrain of anti-regime protests that have spread across the Arab world this year.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Syrian leader Bashar Assad Friday in another effort to press for reform to end deadly unrest in the Arab country, a government official said.

Erdogan "emphasized again the importance of reform," the official told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity, refusing to give other details.

Bahrain has agreed to host a team of U.N. assessors following a violent crackdown on popular protests earlier this year, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said Friday.

"The government of Bahrain has agreed in principle for us to deploy an assessment mission to the country and we welcome this," said spokesman Rupert Colville.