Baghdad's foreign minister will lead an Iraqi initiative to end months of unrest in Syria by holding talks with the Damascus regime, opposition groups and the Arab League, an Iraqi official said Sunday.

Iraq is trying to mediate an end to nine months of bloody unrest in Syria where the U.N. estimates that more than 5,000 people have been killed in a regime crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.

Fighting between al-Qaida-linked militants and government forces in southern Yemen killed two soldiers and six Islamists on Sunday, military and local officials said.

Yemen's army has for months been battling fighters from the Islamist group Partisans of Sharia (Islamic law), trying to retake control of Zinjibar, capital of the restive Abyan province.

The Arab League is "optimistic" that by Monday Syria will sign a proposal to send an observer mission to the unrest-hit country, the Omani minister responsible for foreign affairs said Sunday, as Qatar’s premier said "we have received information stating that he (Syrian President Bashar al-Assad) will sign the protocol."

"We'll see if it's true," Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani, who chairs an Arab League taskforce on Syria, added.

Israel's housing and construction ministry said on Sunday it was to publish tenders for the construction of more than 1,000 housing units in east Jerusalem and the West Bank.

According to the ministry's website, the tenders are for 500 new units in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Homa, and more than 500 in two West Bank settlements -- 348 in Beitar Ilit near Bethlehem, and 180 in Givat Ze'ev northwest of Jerusalem.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called on lawmakers on Sunday to withdraw confidence from one of his deputies, as the country's political crisis deepened with U.S. forces completing their withdrawal.

Maliki's push for the ouster of Saleh al-Mutlak, a Sunni Arab who described him on television as "worse than Saddam Hussein", came a day after the deputy prime minister's Iraqiya bloc said it was boycotting parliament in protest at the premier's alleged centralization of power.

An explosion hit an Egyptian pipeline feeding gas to Israel and Jordan on Sunday in the 10th such attack this year, Egyptian security services said.

The blast struck south of the town of el-Arish in the north of the Sinai peninsula and targeted a segment of pipeline which was gas-free as it was under repair.

Leaders of the wealthy Gulf Arab states will meet at their annual summit in Riyadh on Monday, against a backdrop of accelerating regional turmoil and fears of growing Iranian influence after the U.S. pullout from Iraq.

"Several regional issues impose themselves on the summit this year," including relations with Iran as well as the situation of Syria and Yemen, the Omani minister for foreign affairs, Yussef ben Alawi Abdullah, told Agence France Presse.

Twenty civilians and six regime soldiers were killed in violence in Syria on Sunday as clashes raged between deserters and regular army troops in centers of protest against the regime, human rights activists said.

Security forces shot dead 20 civilians across the country, the Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, reported.

The rival Palestinian movements Fatah and Hamas began meeting in Cairo on Sunday to discuss ways of implementing a stalled reconciliation deal, an official said.

Delegates from the two factions met "to prepare for the comprehensive dialogue" which is to take place on Tuesday in the Egyptian capital, Azzam al-Ahmed, head of the Fatah delegation told Agence France Presse.

Troops and protesters clashed Sunday in Cairo for the third straight day, pelting each other with rocks in skirmishes near parliament in the heart of the Egyptian capital.

At least 10 protesters have been killed and 441 others wounded in the three days of violence, according to the Health Ministry. Activists say most of the 10 fatalities died of gunshot wounds.