Egyptian authorities have released two Canadians who had been held without charge in a crowded, cockroach-infested prison cell in Cairo since mid-August, Canadian officials said Sunday.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper welcomed the release of John Greyson, a Toronto filmmaker and university professor, and Tarek Loubani, an emergency room doctor from London, Ontario.

U.S. forces struck two militant targets in Africa on Saturday, snatching a top Al-Qaida suspect from the streets of Tripoli and launching a pre-dawn raid against a Shebab leader's home in Somalia.

In Libya, US forces seized a militant known as Abu Anas al-Libi, a long-sought Al-Qaida operative indicted in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

A nine-year-old Israeli girl from a settlement near the West Bank city of Ramallah was in serious condition after being shot late on Saturday, police and emergency services said.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told Agence France Presse the girl, from Psagot east of the Palestinian political capital of Ramallah, was "shot while playing in the garden outside her house".

An attack targeting Shiite pilgrims in Baghdad killed 23 people and wounded at least 65 on Saturday, officials said.

Accounts differed as to whether the attack in the Adhamiyah area of north Baghdad was a bomb followed by a suicide bombing, or a suicide bombing alone.

The command council of the rebel Free Syrian Army called for unity on Saturday after several prominent rebel brigades rejected the opposition National Coalition umbrella group.

The Supreme Military Council said it had decided to "issue a call for closing ranks, renouncing division, and... rejecting all kinds of dissension caused by trying to separate the political wing from the military one."

Bahrain's general prosecutor on Saturday said he had referred prominent Shiite opposition ex-MP Khalil Marzooq to court on charges of "inciting terrorist crimes".

Marzooq, a senior figure in the main Al-Wefaq opposition formation who was arrested on September 17, also faces charges of "promoting acts that amount to terrorist crimes", Abdulrahman al-Sayyed said in a statement.

Egyptian police used tear gas Saturday to prevent Islamist students from entering a Cairo square that was site of a deadly security crackdown in August, a security official said.

Groups of students tried to enter Rabaa al-Adawiya Square in the Nasr City district when they were stopped by police who fired tear gas to disperse them, the official said.

Egypt on Sunday braced for rival demonstrations called by supporters and opponents of deposed Islamist President Mohammed Morsi as it marks the 40th anniversary of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

The interior ministry warned it would "firmly confront" any violence at the demonstrations on Sunday, which aimed to converge at Cairo's Tahrir Square, epicenter of the 2011 uprising against Hosni Mubarak.

Tunisia's ruling Islamist party agreed Saturday to stand down at the end of October by signing a roadmap with the opposition for a government of independents to be formed within three weeks.

The document, drawn up by four mediators, foresees the nomination of an independent prime minister by the end of next week, who would then have two weeks to form a cabinet.

Fifteen Libyan soldiers were killed and four wounded in an attack on an army checkpoint between two towns southeast of Tripoli, a military spokesman said.

"An army checkpoint in Al-Malti region between Tarhuna and Bani Walid was attacked at dawn on Saturday by an unknown group. Fifteen soldiers were killed and four others wounded," Ali Sheikhi said.