Syrian anti-regime protesters and their Egyptian supporters clashed with backers of President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday outside the Arab League headquarters in Cairo.

The anti-Assad protesters, who had set up camp outside the Arab League, said about 150 Assad loyalists carrying a poster of the embattled president tried to attack their tent but they drove them off with the help of Egyptian protesters.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul said there was "no place for authoritarian regimes" in the Mediterranean region, heaping more pressure on the embattled Syrian regime, in comments published Sunday.

"I strongly believe that there is no place any more for authoritarian regimes -- single party systems that do not have accountability or transparency -- on the shores of the Mediterranean," he told Britain's Sunday Telegraph newspaper.

Arab foreign ministers are to hold crisis talks over Syria in Cairo on Thursday, the Arab League said after it rejected changes proposed by Damascus to its proposal to send an observer mission there.

"The Arab League council will hold an extraordinary meeting on Thursday, at the level of foreign ministers, and will be presided by Qatar," Arab League Deputy Secretary General Ahmed bin Hilli told reporters.

Syrian security forces shot dead at least four civilians on Sunday in Idlib province in the northwest and in Homs province in the center, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Among 17 dead on Saturday, the Britain-based watchdog reported seven civilians killed in the Idlib town of Kfar Kharim, close to the Turkish border.

A United Nations Security Council meeting on Yemen scheduled for Monday has been postponed for a week, the world body's senior envoy to the Arabian Peninsula country told AFP on Sunday.

"The Security Council meeting was postponed to November 28 at the request of the protagonists" of the Yemeni crisis, said U.N. envoy Jamal Benomar, who has been in Sanaa since last week for talks on ending 10 months of political deadlock and bloodshed.

Israel's communications ministry has shut down an Israeli-Palestinian radio station, accusing it of operating a pirate broadcast because it is licensed in the Palestinian territories.

Mossi Raz, the co-director of the "Kol Hashalom" or "All for Peace" radio station, confirmed the closure in comments to Israeli public radio on Sunday.

Israel's ambassador to Egypt, Yitzhak Levanon, returned to Cairo on Sunday after he was evacuated in September following an attack on the embassy, an airport official told Agence France Presse.

"Levanon arrived in the early hours of Sunday on a Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul," the official said.

The United Arab Emirates and France share a "strategic relationship,” the Gulf state's foreign minister said at a meeting with his French counterpart, the state news agency WAM reported on Sunday.

Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan met French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe at the annual Sir Bani Yas forum, an informal gathering on regional peace and security attended by top local and international officials.

Residents in the Syrian capital woke up to two loud explosions Sunday amid activist reports that a major building belonging to the ruling Baath party in the capital Damascus had been by hit several rocket-propelled grenades.

There was no immediate confirmation of the report, which would mark the first significant attack on a government building in relatively quiet central Damascus.

The opposition Syrian National Council announced Sunday a political program aimed at bringing down President Bashar Assad followed by a parliamentary election after a year's transition.

In a statement received by Agence France Presse, the SNC said its goal was to "build a democratic, pluralistic, and civil state by ... breaking down the existing regime, including all of its operatives and symbols."