Jerusalem municipality on Wednesday approved plans for another 130 housing units in Gilo, a settlement neighborhood in the annexed eastern sector of the Holy City, a city councilor told Agence France Presse.

Pepe Alalu of the left-wing Meretz party said the district planning committee had given the green light to a project to build 130 homes in three 12-storey tower blocks on the eastern outskirts of Gilo which lies just a few kilometers north of Bethlehem.

A Yemeni civilian was shot dead Wednesday in a shootout between the Republican Guard and gunmen loyal to dissident tribal chief Sadiq al-Ahmar, witnesses said.

The clash broke out when a military commission attempted to remove barriers near the interior ministry in Amran Street, Hasaba neighborhood, in an effort to return the capital to normalcy following unrest.

Syria on Wednesday released from jail 755 prisoners who had been involved in anti-regime unrest, state television said, as Arab observers deployed in flashpoint hubs to implement a peace deal.

"Seven hundred and fifty-five prisoners who had been involved in the recent incidents in Syria and who did not have Syrian blood on their hands have been released" from prison, the state broadcaster said in a news flash.

The murder trial of Egypt's former president Hosni Mubarak resumed Wednesday after a three-month hiatus that saw the ousted strongman's fate eclipsed by deadly clashes and an Islamist election victory.

Mubarak risks the death sentence if he is found to have been complicit in the killings of some 850 people who died during protests that overthrew him in February.

Russia urged its ally Syria on Wednesday to provide as much freedom as possible for observers from the Arab League that began their first inspections of flashpoint cities this week.

"We constantly work with the Syrian leadership calling on it to fully cooperate with observers from the Arab League and to create work conditions that are as comfortable and free as possible," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a news conference with his Egyptian counterpart.

At least one rocket hit a camp in Iraq housing Iranian dissidents, officials and the group based there said Wednesday, after Baghdad and the U.N. signed a pact to resettle its residents.

The strike, the second in three days, occurred at about 8:00 pm (17:00 GMT) on Tuesday, but caused no casualties, according to a spokesman for the camp and an official at the Iraqi security command center in Diyala provincial capital Baquba.

A rocket was fired from Gaza into southern Israel on Wednesday morning without exploding or causing any casualties or damage, Israeli police said.

"A rocket fired from Gaza fell this morning in the area of Shaar Hanegev. The device did not explode and there were no injuries or damage," police spokesman Louba Samri told Agence France Presse.

Human Rights Watch has accused Syria's regime of hiding hundreds of detainees held in its crackdown on dissent from Arab observers visiting the country to assess implementation of a peace deal.

"Syrian authorities have transferred perhaps hundreds of detainees to off-limits military sites to hide them from Arab League monitors now in the country," HRW said late Tuesday.

The United States on Tuesday accused Syria of having intensified attacks against its people before Arab observers arrived in the country to monitor a deal to end nine months of deadly violence.

"It was a horrible situation where the violence spiked over the course of several days. We obviously condemn this escalation of violence," State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner told reporters.

Israeli air strikes killed at least one Palestinian and wounded 10, two seriously, in the Gaza Strip late on Tuesday, Palestinian medics and health officials told Agence France Presse.

They named the dead man as Abdullah al-Telbani, 22, and said he was riding in a motorized rickshaw in Jabaliya refugee camp in the north of the strip when the attack took place. It was not immediately clear if the other casualties were riding with him.