The Israeli parliament was to vote on Monday on a motion to dissolve itself and clear the way for a snap election, likely to be set for January 22, officials said.

At the session, which was to start at 14:00 GMT, MPs were expected to approve a government bill to dissolve the parliament, or Knesset, paving the way for early elections which were called last week by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

A Yemeni fighter jet crashed on takeoff on Monday on a routine training mission in the south, killing the pilot and wounding another crew member, the defense ministry said in a statement.

The aircraft, a MiG-21, crashed due to "technical failure," the statement said.

Top Democrats accused Republican White House hopeful Mitt Romney on Sunday of "cravenly" politicizing the deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi to further his presidential ambitions.

The fallout from the attack has developed into a toxic political issue as Romney and Democratic President Barack Obama wage an all-out battle in a tight race 23 days out from the November 6 election.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi on Sunday gave visiting U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi a proposal aimed at ending the conflict in key regional ally Syria.

Salehi said Tehran had "handed its unofficial detailed proposal in writing aimed at solving the Syrian crisis" to Brahimi as well as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, in comments broadcast on Arabic-language Al-Alam television.

Libya's General National Congress elected Ali Zeidan, a long-time opponent of deposed dictator Moammer Gadhafi, as prime minister on Sunday, the assembly's chief said.

"Ali Zeidan is elected prime minister and is asked to propose a cabinet within two weeks," Mohammed Megaryef, president of the national assembly, said in remarks broadcast on television.

Dozens of corpses have been found in a hospital morgue in the Syrian province of Damascus, a monitoring group said, adding the circumstances of the deaths were not immediately clear.

"We know they were shot dead, most likely during clashes with the army," said Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman.

A senior United Nations envoy on Sunday condemned a wave of attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian olive groves and called on Israel to punish the perpetrators.

"I am alarmed at recent reports that Israeli settlers in the West Bank have repeatedly attacked Palestinian farmers and destroyed hundreds of their olive trees at the height of the harvest season," said Robert Serry, U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East peace process.

Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards have developed plans to damage an oil tanker in the Gulf to create an environmental disaster, German magazine Spiegel reported on Sunday.

Citing Western intelligence sources, the weekly said the top-secret plan, codenamed "Dirty Water", is aimed at blocking the oil-rich Gulf to shipping and forcing Western countries to become involved in a huge clean-up operation.

Two men were killed and another two critically wounded on Sunday in an Israeli strike on central Gaza, Palestinian medics said in what was the third deadly raid in 24 hours.

The incident occurred just east of Deir al-Balah, with the Israeli military confirming it had targeted "a terrorist rocket squad."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said Israel was facing an increasing number of cyberattacks, just days after Washington issued a veiled warning to Iran over digital attacks on its interests.

"There have been increasing efforts to carry out cyberattacks on Israel's computer infrastructure," Netanyahu said at the weekly cabinet meeting, without giving details.