Hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank and east Jerusalem on Saturday held rallies demanding the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons, many of whom are currently on hunger strike.

In Ramallah, about 500 Palestinians took part in a rally organized by the radical Islamic movement Hamas, an Agence France Presse correspondent said, in what was the first time in two years the West Bank city's Fatah rulers allowed the rival Palestinian faction to hold a demonstration.

Syria has freed 265 detainees "involved" in the popular uprising against President Bashar Assad, "but who do not have blood on their hands," the state news agency SANA reported on Saturday.

Releasing detainees is a requisite of the six-point peace plan brokered by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan last month, as is the ceasefire agreement that came into effect on April 12 but has suffered violations ever since.

A lawyer for Moammar Gadhafi's son Seif al-Islam has called on the International Criminal Court to disqualify chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Campo from the case, alleging possible bias, the ICC said Saturday.

The submission made Thursday was published on the website of the ICC, which is in a tussle with the new Libyan authorities holding Seif al-Islam over the right to try him.

An Israeli military observation balloon has crashed accidentally in Israel near the Gaza Strip, an army spokeswoman said on Saturday.

"An observation balloon of the army crashed Friday in Israel near the security fence" between the Jewish state and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, she told Agence France Presse.

Regime troops used tear gas on Saturday to try to disperse a mass funeral attended by thousands of people who took to the streets of the Syrian capital to mourn slain protesters, a rights group said.

"Syrian regime forces used tear gas to disperse people attending the funerals of the Kfar Sousa martyrs and calling for the fall of the regime," the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Four Bahraini policemen were wounded in a "terrorist" attack in a Shiite village, one of them critically, the kingdom's interior ministry said on Saturday.

"Four policemen were injured including one critically in a terror blast in Bani Jamra," west of the capital Manama, the ministry said on Twitter, without giving further details of the attack or its perpetrators.

Egypt's military prosecution on Saturday ordered 179 people be detained over deadly clashes between troops and anti-military protesters in Cairo, a military source told Agence France Presse.

Following the arrest of 320 people after Friday's clashes outside the defense ministry in Cairo, the prosecution "has decided to hold 179 people, including 13 women, for 15 days pending investigation," the source said.

A series of blasts rocked Syria's capital and the northern commercial hub of Aleppo on Saturday, killing at least five civilians in the second city, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

One explosion in Aleppo went off in a car wash just as a bus was passing by in Tal al-Zarazir district, the Observatory's Rami Abdel Rahman said.

The opposition Syrian National Council called on U.N. observers on Saturday to visit the Damascus neighborhoods of Kfar Sousa and Tadamon where nine people died during demonstrations and funerals a day earlier.

In a statement, the SNC urged the observers to visit "where the funerals of the martyrs killed Friday will be held."

At least two people were killed on Friday in fierce clashes between anti-military protesters and soldiers in Cairo and nearly 300 others wounded, hospital officials and medics said.

Egypt's military rulers imposed an overnight curfew around the defense ministry in central Cairo where the skirmishes occurred and the military prosecution announced that 170 people were arrested.