Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards have killed 22 rebels of the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK) in a new offensive along the northwestern border with Iraq, state television reported on Monday.

"Twenty-two PJAK rebels were killed in the new Guards operations in Sardasht Heights, and another 27 rebels have been wounded," the report said.

The Palestinians will not be deterred from seeking United Nations membership, a senior official said in Ramallah Sunday, after reports Washington was trying to head off their bid.

"The Palestinians are going to the U.N. Security Council to ask for recognition for the state of Palestine on the 1967 borders ... and there is no turning back or other choice than this one," said leading Palestinian official Nabil Shaath.

The BRICS group of emerging powers are determined not to allow a Libyan-style solution to the crisis in Syria, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Sunday.

"If it's up to the BRICS, the Libyan scenario won't be repeated," Russian news agencies quoted Lavrov as saying in a joint press conference with his Brazilian counterpart Antonio Patriota.

Negotiations for the surrender of Moammar Gadhafi’s forces in the Libyan town of Bani Walid have failed and will not resume, the chief negotiator for the National Transitional Council said Sunday.

"I am leaving the military commander to resolve the problem," Abdullah Kenshil said when asked if an attack would now be launched on the town southeast of Tripoli where at least one of Gadhafi’s sons is reputed to be hiding.

Moammar Gadhafi's regime warned of "dire consequences" for relations between Libya and Britain if the convicted Lockerbie bomber died in a Scottish jail, secret files released Sunday showed.

In the latest revelations from intelligence documents obtained by media and rights groups in Tripoli, senior British officials feared Gadhafi "might seek to extract vengeance" if the cancer-stricken Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi was not released.

Candidates in the United Arab Emirates began campaigning on Sunday for the second-ever elections to choose half the members of the purely consultative Federal National Council.

A total of 468 candidates, including 85 women, are running in the polls on September 24, the second since the UAE federation was established upon its independence from Britain in 1971.

Troops loyal to Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh deployed in force in Sanaa on Sunday after opposition groups called new mass demonstrations demanding his ouster, an Agence France Presse correspondent reported.

The security forces closed off all access to the capital from Saturday afternoon while armed civilians loyal to the president also took to the streets, the correspondent said.

Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi said on Sunday that Syria has agreed to host him for a probable visit this week to the strife-torn country.

"I have been informed that Syria welcomes" the visit which would take place "probably this week," Arabi told a news conference at his pan-Arab organization’s headquarters in Cairo.

Israel wants to calm a fierce row that has erupted with one-time ally Turkey over a 2010 raid on an aid flotilla, but not at any cost, including issuing an apology, ministers and officials said Sunday.

In recent days, ties between the once-friendly nations appear to have plumbed new depths, with Ankara expelling Israel's ambassador and suspending military agreements in the wake of a U.N. report on the deadly 2010 raid.

An Iranian airliner blew a tire on landing in the country's second-largest city Mashhad early on Sunday, injuring 11 people, three of them seriously, the official IRNA news agency reported.

"Eight people received treatment at the scene and three others were taken to hospital," after the 12:02 am (1932 GMT Saturday) accident at the city's Shahid Hasheminejad airport, the news agency quoted the head of the provincial medical emergency center, Reza Vafainejad, as saying.