Algeria's national assembly on Tuesday voted to maintain a two-decade ban on the country's main religious party as lawmakers debated proposals for a new electoral law.

A month after Islamists swept to victory in neighboring Tunisia, the vote will ensure that the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) party, which came out on top Algeria's 1991 elections, will continue to be locked out of power.

Syria foiled an operation by "terrorists" to infiltrate the country from neighboring Turkey, the official news agency SANA reported on Tuesday.

"Border guards last (Monday) night thwarted an attempted infiltration by armed terrorist groups from Turkey" in the Ain Bayda sector of Idlib province of northwest Syria, it said.

Kuwait Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmed al-Sabah on Tuesday issued a decree dissolving the Gulf state parliament, state television reported, citing a "threat to supreme national interests."

"An emiri decree has been issued to dissolve the national assembly," the television said.

Millions flooded Iraq's shrine city Karbala on Tuesday for Ashura rituals on Shiite Islam's most important day, amid tight security after bomb attacks targeting pilgrims killed 28 people.

Throngs of pilgrims walked the streets beating their chests or flaying their backs with chains, ritually mourning the death of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, who was killed by armies of the caliph Yazid near Karbala in 680 AD.

Egyptian presidential candidate Mohamed elBaradei has accused Islamist parties which won a majority in elections last week of relying on slogans which he said would be laid bare if they gained power.

The Islamists picked up two-thirds of votes cast for parties in the election last Monday and Tuesday in a third of Egypt's districts, with a new hardline Salafi party winning almost a quarter.

A civilian was killed as a shell hit a bus in Yemen's flashpoint city of Taez where fighting has cost more than 30 lives since last week, medics said on Tuesday.

The bus was heading towards the restive northern al-Hasab district late on Monday when it was hit by an artillery round fired by troops loyal to President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the sources said.

Members of Iraqi online jihadist forums have called for fighters and arms to be sent to aid Syrians opposing President Bashar al-Assad's regime, who have faced a bloody crackdown since March.

Sunni jihadist sites such as Honein and Ansar al-Mujahedeen display numerous comments and articles critical of Assad's regime, and videos of bloody events they say took place in Syria.

A wave of bomb attacks targeting Shiite pilgrims in Iraq killed 28 people and wounded 78 Monday, a day before the peak of the Ashoura religious commemorations, security officials and medics said.

It was the bloodiest day in Iraq since October 27, when at least 32 people were killed and 71 wounded in twin blasts in Baghdad.

Thirty-four Syrians abducted by pro-regime "shabiha" militiamen were found dead on Monday in the flashpoint central city of Homs, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

The Britain-based watchdog said an activist on the ground reported seeing "the bodies of 34 civilians, in a square in the pro-regime neighborhood of al-Zahra, who had been abducted by the shabiha on Monday."

Israeli troops were on very high alert along the southern border with the Egyptian Sinai on Monday over fears a cell of gunmen had crossed the border into southern Israel, a security source told Agence France Presse.

The state of alert was based on "intelligence information about a cell of terrorists planning an attack" on a road which runs close to the border in the southern Negev desert, the source said.