Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani met Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan behind closed doors in Istanbul for two hours on Saturday, Turkish news agency Anatolia reported without providing details.

Larijani is on a regional tour, having already been to Syria and also planning to visit Lebanon.

Morocco's moderate Islamist Party of Justice and Development swept to power in historic elections last year in the wake of Arab Spring protests that brought hopes of change.

But a year on, analysts say disappointment is growing at the slow pace of reform, compounded by doubts about how much power the palace has devolved and looming economic woes, with unemployed youths marching daily in the capital.

Syrian rebels attacked army positions in the northern province of Aleppo on Saturday while Islamist fighters clashed with Kurdish militias on the border with Turkey, residents said.

Insurgents also attacked troops guarding the strategic Tishrin dam, located on the Euphrates river between the provinces of Aleppo and Raqa.

Rebels who have besieged Sheikh Suleiman army base for nearly two months are confident it will fall in days, giving them full control of a swathe of northwest Syria from Aleppo to the Turkish border.

Their optimism has been buoyed by a steady stream of defectors from the ranks of the several hundred troops defending the strategic base, the last major garrison still in army hands between the border and Syria's northern metropolis.

Gaza residents said Saturday that Israel has eased some border restrictions as part of its truce with the Palestinian territory's Hamas rulers, allowing farmers to visit land near its security fence and letting fishermen head further out to sea.

The Egyptian-brokered cease-fire ended eight days of cross-border fighting that claimed 166 Palestinian and six Israeli lives, according to health officials.

Iraq's parliament speaker said Saturday that "significant progress" has been made on resolving an Arab-Kurd crisis, although a deployment of Kurdish forces in the country's north has raised the stakes.

Osama al-Nujaifi has been pushing to resolve a crisis between Baghdad and the autonomous Kurdistan region in northern Iraq that he has warned could lead to civil war.

Defiant Egyptian judges hit back at President Mohamed Morsi on Saturday, demanding he reverse a decree giving himself sweeping powers that put him beyond judicial oversight and calling for a nationwide strike.

Egypt's Judges Club, a body that represents judges throughout the country, called for "the suspension of work in all courts and prosecution administrations," after several hours of emergency talks in response to what they called Morsi's "ferocious attack on Egyptian justice."

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has congratulated Gaza's Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya in a telephone call on a "great victory" over Israel, the two sides said on Saturday.

Haniya in turn "thanked Iran for its support," they added, days after Tehran confirmed it had supplied military aid to Gaza.

The body of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat will be exhumed on Tuesday to undergo poison tests, the head of the Palestinian inquiry team said on Saturday.

"The tomb will be opened on November 27 and experts will take samples the same day within a matter of a few hours," Tawfiq Tirawi told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Nearly a week from regional elections, Algerians are less interested in the public vote than an intensifying behind-the-scenes power struggle — one that is playing out through a flurry of corruption probes.

Though ostensibly a democracy, Algeria is really ruled by a powerful president and a shadowy collection of military generals and intelligence chiefs, making figuring out who has real power a constant preoccupation.