Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Sunday that the Jewish state recognizes South Sudan and wished the world's newest nation "much success."

"Yesterday, a new state was born, South Sudan. I hereby announce that Israel recognizes the Republic of South Sudan," he said. "We wish it much success."

The Syrian foreign ministry called in the French and U.S. ambassadors on Sunday to deliver a "strong protest" over their visit to the flashpoint central city of Hama last week, state media said.

"The ministry called in the U.S. and French ambassadors to deliver a strong protest against their visit to Hamas without prior authorization... which constitutes a flagrant interference in Syria's domestic affairs," the official SANA news agency said.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu will visit Iran Sunday to discuss a wave of unrest shaking Middle East countries, a senior Turkish diplomat said.

Davutoglu was to travel to Tehran after completing talks in Saudi Arabia, where he flew Saturday evening, the diplomat, who accompanied the minister on the trip, told AFP by telephone.

Syria opened a "national dialogue" on Sunday that it hailed as a step towards multi-party democracy after five decades of Baath party rule, but its credibility was undermined by an opposition boycott.

Some 200 delegates, including independent MPs and members of the Baath party, in power since 1963, observed a minute's silence in memory of the "martyrs" before the playing of the national anthem.

Some 120 foreign activists were being held in Israeli jails Saturday, awaiting possible deportation, after arriving at Tel Aviv's airport over the weekend as part of a solidarity mission with the Palestinians, a government official said.

Others who managed to get through Israeli border controls traveled to the West Bank where some joined a demonstration against Israel's separation barrier.

A Yemeni army officer and two of his troops were killed in an ambush by gunmen near the southern port city of Aden on Saturday, military sources said.

They said the unidentified assailants opened fire with automatic weapons on a jeep in the village of Thalaet, west of Daleh, killing Lotf al-Mazlum and two soldiers as well as wounding two civilians, witnesses said.

Iran said it fired two medium range missiles into the Indian Ocean six months ago under the eyes of "American spy planes," local media reported on Saturday, quoting a top military commander.

"In Bahman (Iranian month which runs from January 21 to February 19, two Revolutionary Guard missiles with the range of 1,900 kilometers were fired from Semnan (central Iran) to the designated targets in the Indian Ocean," said the unit's aerospace chief, Amir Ali Hajizadeh said.

Egypt on Saturday appointed a new information minister, a controversial post that had been abolished after the uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak.

Osama Heikal, former editor-in-chief of the liberal Wafd party's newspaper, was sworn in on Saturday in front of Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, the head of the military council that took power when Mubarak was ousted.

Around 2,000 Chadian migrants trapped in war-torn Libya are being flown back to their homeland, the International Organization for Migration said on Saturday.

The group -- mostly women and children -- have been stuck in the southern desert towns of Sabha and Gatroun while trying to flee across the Sahara to Chad.

Security forces killed at least 15 people and arrested more than 200 people in Syria, activists said, as Human Rights Watch denounced on Saturday a "deliberate policy" to disperse protesters with deadly force.

The deaths came as Damascus accused the U.S. envoy of inciting violence in Hama -- where nearly half a million people protested on Friday -- a charge roundly denied by Washington which accused the Syrian embassy of spying on demonstrators in the United States.