Arab League officials monitoring violence in Syria appear to be in conflict over whether government snipers are perched on rooftops in the southern flashpoint city of Daraa.

In a video released by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a man wearing an orange vest with the Arab League logo said in Daraa: "There are snipers; we have seen them with our own eyes."

Two mortar shells fired from the Gaza Strip landed in southern Israel on Sunday, causing no damage or injuries, an Israeli police spokeswoman said.

"Two mortar shells fired from the northern Gaza Strip fell this morning in the Eshkol district, there was no damage or injuries," Luba Samri told AFP.

Palestinian leaders decided on Saturday to seek sessions of the U.N. Security Council and the Arab League, hoping for action to halt Israeli settlement.

A statement by the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization said continued settlement growth in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem was liable "to destroy all chances of a peace process and the two-state solution."

Two Yemeni soldiers and two suspected al-Qaida militants were killed in clashes overnight near the restive southern city of Zinjibar, a military source said on Saturday.

Three soldiers and four members of the Partisans of Sharia, an al-Qaida-linked insurgent group that took over most of Zinjibar earlier this year, were wounded in the fighting, the source said.

Hundreds of Kurds staged a violent protest Saturday in southeastern Turkey after police said two Kurdish rebels had been killed in a gun battle after a raid on their hideout.

The protestors demonstrated near where the two alleged members of the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) died earlier in the center of Diyarbakir, the main city of the majority Kurdish region.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki declared "Iraq Day" on Saturday to mark the end of a pact allowing U.S. forces to stay in the country, two weeks after they left and with Iraq mired in a political row.

Speaking at a ceremony at the al-Shaab stadium complex in central Baghdad, Maliki said December 31 was "a feast for all Iraqis" and marked "the day Iraq became sovereign".

The rebel Free Syrian Army is suspending operations against regime forces during the mission of monitors deployed in Syria to implement an Arab League peace plan, its chief told Agence France Presse on Saturday.

"We have decided to stop all the operations, except those for self-defense," dissident Colonel Riyadh Asaad told AFP in a telephone interview from his base in Turkey.

Sectarian clashes broke out in the southern Egyptian province of Assiut after a Christian student posted a drawing of the Muslim prophet on the Internet, officials said on Saturday.

The clashes, which spread to three villages, saw several Christian homes burned and left five police officers injured, a security official told Agence France Presse.

Two Yemeni soldiers and two suspected al-Qaida militants were killed in clashes overnight near the restive southern city of Zinjibar, a military source said on Saturday.

Three soldiers and four members of the Partisans of Sharia, an al-Qaida-linked insurgent group that took over most of Zinjibar earlier this year, were wounded in the fighting, the source said.

The United Nations said Friday it expects Syrian authorities to grant unfettered access and complete cooperation to Arab observers as bloodshed continues amid a crackdown on protesters.

"It is critical that the observer mission be given unhindered access and full cooperation by the government of Syria, and that its independence and impartiality be fully preserved," U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said.