A Syrian media rights group on Tuesday demanded a full inquiry into the death of a journalist who was reportedly shot in the head by gunmen waiting for him outside his Damascus home.

Shukri Ahmed Ratib Abu Burghul died on Monday in a Damascus hospital from gunshot wounds suffered on December 30, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said.

Syria's ruling Baath party said Tuesday that it will hold its 11th party congress next month as it faces an unprecedented popular uprising demanding its leadership resign.

"The regional command of the Baath Arab Socialist Party has decided to hold its 11th regional congress during the first week of February," the official Al-Baath newspaper reported.

Armed clashes erupted in the center of the Libyan capital Tripoli on Tuesday, killing two, as gunmen traded anti-aircraft and heavy machinegun fire, witnesses said.

Meanwhile, Al-Arabiya television reported that six people were killed in the fighting.

Egyptian prosecutors on Tuesday portrayed ousted president Hosni Mubarak as a "tyrannical leader", as they made their opening arguments in his murder trial.

The ailing 83-year-old former strongman, who was wheeled into court on a stretcher, is accused of involvement in the deaths of protesters during the uprising that overthrew him in February.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy demanded Tuesday that Syrian strongman Bashar Assad step down, accusing him of overseeing sickening "massacres" against his own people.

Sarkozy told an audience of French military personnel that the Syrian people should be allowed "to freely choose their own destiny" after facing what he denounced as brutal persecution that inspires "disgust and revulsion.”

Saboteurs attacked a gas pipeline near the flashpoint Syrian city of Homs on Tuesday, the official SANA news agency reported.

"A terrorist group has targeted a gas pipeline near Rastan" in the central province of Homs, said SANA, referring to the bastion of protests against the regime of President Bashar Assad.

Egyptians were voting on Tuesday in the final round of a landmark post-revolution election that has propelled Islamist movements into the center stage of politics.

Around 15 million eligible voters have their chance to cast ballots for the first parliament since an uprising overthrew veteran president Hosni Mubarak last February.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said Tuesday the Arab observer mission in Syria needed to be "clarified" and complained that Russia was blocking any U.N. condemnation of the Damascus regime.

"The conditions under which this observer mission is operating should be clarified," Juppe told French television I-Tele, adding that he was "skeptical" about its progress.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Monday that the past week's Iranian war games in the Strait of Hormuz were a sign of the regime's "distress" in the face of tightening Western sanctions.

"We saw reports about the large Iranian drill near the Strait of Hormuz today, which included missile firings," Barak told members of his Atzmaut (Independence) faction.

Switzerland's highest court has refused to lift an entry ban on a cousin of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who was seeking to travel to the country to fight sanctions imposed by Bern.

Hafez Makhlouf, who heads Damascus' secret services, counts among the regime's hardliners, and is alleged to have been in charge of the brutal repression against demonstrators.