Unidentified assailants gunned down a soldier outside his home and attacked a special forces base in Libya's second city Benghazi during the night, a security official said on Saturday.

There were no casualties in the attack on the base even though the assailants used rocket-propelled grenades, sub machineguns and an anti-tank mine, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Thousands demonstrated in south Yemen's main city Aden on Saturday to demand a return to independence, a day after President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi said only autonomy was on the table.

The rally in Aden's central Parade Square came as southerners marked the anniversary of the end of British colonial rule in 1967, which created an independent state that lasted until union with the north in 1990.

A top Egyptian official has criticized a controversial new protest law that bans all unauthorized demonstrations, saying it should be reviewed, London-based pan-Arabic newspaper Asharq al-Awsat reported Saturday.

Ziad Bahaa Eldin, a deputy prime minister in Egypt's military-installed government, said he hoped that a consensus could still be reached on the law that has angered secular and pro-democracy activists.

A 50-member panel drafting Egypt's new constitution begins voting on Saturday on the final document which will then be put to a referendum, officials said.

The constitution is the first key milestone in a road map envisaged by Egypt's military-installed rulers after the army ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi on July 3.

Israeli border police killed a Palestinian during a raid aimed at netting illegal immigrants in a suburb of commercial capital Tel Aviv early Saturday, a police spokeswoman said.

"Border police carried out an operation this morning in a cemetery in Petah Tikva looking for foreigners residing in Israel illegally," Luba Samri said.

Pope Francis will visit Jordan during a trip to the Holy Land next year, the state Petra news agency reported on Saturday, citing a senior Vatican source.

"During his (August) visit to the Vatican, King Abdullah II invited His Holiness to visit Jordan," Petra quoted Vatican foreign affairs official Dominique Mamberti as saying in Amman.

Two Algerian detainees at Guantanamo Bay are fighting efforts by U.S. President Barack Obama's administration to transfer them to their homeland, fearing abuse, a lawyer said Friday.

Attorney Robert Kirsch said he had pressed the Pentagon and State Department, along with the Algerian Embassy in Washington, to avoid the men's "imminent" repatriation set to take place as early as this weekend.

The United States voiced concern over fresh unrest in Egypt after nearly 200 people were arrested Friday in a clampdown on Islamists protesting against a new law banning unauthorized demonstrations.

In Cairo, police used tear gas against hundreds of Morsi supporters who had gathered in front of one of the capital's presidential palaces. Gunshots could be heard as well.

U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon warned Friday of "increasingly dangerous" tensions between Israel and the Palestinians which could threaten peace talks.

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are holding U.S.-brokered peace contacts, but Ban said, "I am alarmed by the increasingly dangerous situation on the ground. There has been an escalation of violence and incitement."

One man was killed when armed groups of Muslims and Christians clashed in central Egypt over a relationship between a Coptic Christian and a Muslim woman, state news agency MENA reported Friday.

It said the Muslim man was killed when violence erupted late Thursday in an area called Deir Muwass in Minya province.