The lawyer defending Hosni Mubarak told the court on Saturday that there is not a shred of evidence linking the ousted Egyptian strongman to a controversial gas deal with Israel.

Farid al-Deeb said Egypt's spy agency negotiated the 2005 deal in line with international norms.

A roadside bomb killed 15 detainees being transported in a Syrian prison truck in Idlib province in the northwest on Saturday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

"15 prisoners were killed in the explosion which targeted a prison truck on the road between Idlib town and the village of Mastumeh," the Britain-based group's chairman, Rami Abdul Rahman, told Agence France Presse by telephone.

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, who survived a 1997 Israeli assassination bid, has confirmed he wants to step down after eight years in post, the Islamist movement said on Saturday.

"Political bureau chief Khaled Meshaal has notified Hamas's consultative council that he does not wish to be a candidate for the movement's future leadership," a statement said.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti arrived in Libya Saturday to revive a treaty of friendship and to offer his nation's expertise in training police in the North African country, an AFP correspondent said.

Monti, on his first visit to Libya since the fall Moammar Gadhafi, is leading a delegation of high-ranking officials, including Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi and Admiral Giampaolo Di Paola.

The Yemeni parliament adopted on Saturday a law giving veteran President Ali Abdullah Saleh immunity from prosecution in return for stepping down under a Gulf-brokered transition deal.

The law adopted gives Saleh, in power since 1978, "complete" immunity, and also offers partial protection from legal action to his aides.

Morocco's new foreign minister Saad Eddine Othmani will visit Algiers next week, his ministry said Friday, as Rabat seeks to normalize ties strained for decades over the disputed Western Sahara region.

The two-day visit starting Monday will include talks with his counterpart Mourad Medelci and a meeting with Algeria's veteran President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, it said.

Dressed in green military fatigues and clutching CVs under their arms, young Libyans who fought Moammar Gadhafi are now signing up to register for government jobs.

Some of these men spent months fighting Gadhafi’s forces on the front lines of the conflict that erupted last February and have provided security on Libya's streets since fighting ended in October, after Gadhafi was killed.

U.S. military chief General Martin Dempsey on Friday urged Israel to keep the channels of communication open amid concerns the Jewish state could launch a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.

Speaking after talks with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak on what was his first visit to Israel since taking office last October, Dempsey said both sides would benefit from greater engagement over regional issues, in an apparent reference to the Iranian nuclear standoff.

Syrian security forces on Friday killed 13 people across the country, activists said, as pressure mounted on the Arab League to seek U.N. intervention in the face of growing frustration that the bloc's hard-won observer mission in Syria has failed to staunch 10 months of killing.

Meanwhile, thousands of people poured out of mosques after Friday prayers to call for the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad's regime, after choosing "Prisoners of the Revolution" as the slogan for this week's main protests.

President Nicolas Sarkozy declared Friday that France cannot stand silently by and allow Syrian leader Bashar Assad to put down the pro-democracy revolt in his country.

"We cannot accept the ferocious repression by the Syrian leadership of its people, a repression that has led the entire country into chaos, and a chaos that will help extremists of all kinds," he said.