Syrian troops pounded rebels in northern Syria and Damascus province before dawn on Monday, while fierce fighting broke out in Aleppo and the capital, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

On the northeastern outskirts of Damascus, clashes erupted when troops tried to storm the rebel-controlled town of Harasta. On Sunday, at least eight civilians and eight rebels were killed in fighting and shelling there.

Ten people were killed and 15 others wounded on Sunday when a bomb exploded outside a police station in the Christian neighborhood of Bab Touma in the Syrian capital Damascus, a rights group said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights gave a toll of 10 dead and 15 wounded as a car bomb blew up outside the station in Bab Touma, where many in the minority community fear Islamists in the anti-Assad revolt.

Peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi on Sunday urged the two sides in Syria's conflict to declare "unilateral" ceasefires for this week's Eid al-Adha holiday, following talks with President Bashar Assad.

"I appeal to everyone to take a unilateral decision to cease hostilities on the occasion of Eid al-Adha and that this truce be respected from today or tomorrow," Brahimi told reporters, referring to the four-day Muslim holiday starting on Friday.

Iran's foreign ministry on Saturday rejected a guilty plea by an Iranian-American man that he conspired with Iranian officials to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington.

Manssor Arbabsiar pleaded guilty on Wednesday at the New York federal court to attempting to hire a Mexican drug gang for $1.5 million to blow up the Saudi envoy in a restaurant he frequented in Washington.

Polling stations were poised to closed in the West Bank on Saturday after 12 hours of voting in the first Palestinian election since 2006, with voters casting their ballots in a municipal poll that was boycotted by Hamas.

After nine hours of voting, the Central Elections Commission (CEC) said the turnout was 35 percent in all areas except for the southern Hebron district where more than 40 percent of registered voters had shown up by the late morning.

Clashes between Libyan pro-government forces and fighters of Bani Walid, a former bastion of slain dictator Moammar Gadhafi, killed nine people on Saturday and wounded more than 100 others, a medical official said.

"The hospital has received nine people killed and 122 wounded," from the fighting, said the medical official in the city of Misrata, northeast of Bani Walid, where pro-government forces are being treated.

Mussa Ibrahim, who served as the last spokesman for deposed Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, was arrested on Saturday southwest of the capital, the prime minister's office said.

"Mussa Ibrahim was arrested at a checkpoint in the town of Tarhuna," read a brief statement sent to journalists after rumors that he had been detained spread on social networking sites.

Shootings and bomb attacks in Baghdad and Iraq's main northern city Mosul mostly targeting officials and security forces killed at least 11 people on Saturday, the country's deadliest day this month.

In the bloodiest attack, twin roadside bombs in a market area in the north Baghdad neighborhood of Kadhimiyah killed at least seven people and wounded 49 others, an interior ministry official and a medical source said.

The Kuwaiti cabinet on Saturday amended a controversial electoral law and set December 1 as the date for snap polls, acting on orders from the emir.

"The cabinet approved the amendment of article 2 of the electoral law to change the voting system ... and approved a decree to invite voters to elect a new national assembly on December 1," it said in a statement.

A top member of al-Qaida network in Yemen has died of wounds suffered in a drone strike carried out earlier this month in the eastern province of Shabwa, a tribal chief said on Saturday.

Adel al-Abab, also known as Abu al-Zubair, and who was said to have been the sharia (Islamic law) chief in the al-Qaida Yemen branch, died hours after he was targeted by a drone in the village of Saeed in Shabwa, the tribal chief said.