Gaza's Hamas rulers on Saturday executed a Palestinian convicted of collaborating with Israel and two others deemed complicit in murder, the interior ministry said.

The ministry said in a statement that the three men were hanged in a "security center" in Gaza City.

The airport in Yemen's capital was shut down on Saturday after forces loyal to a general close to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh threatened to attack landing and departing aircraft, an airport source said.

The airport has been surrounded by forces loyal to air force chief General Mohammed Saleh al-Ahmar, Saleh's half-brother, who has refused to step down after being sacked by President Abdrabuh Mansour Hadi, the source said.

U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon said Friday that increased attacks by government forces on Syrian cities "violate" the U.N. Security Council's demand for an end to hostilities.

The U.N. secretary general strongly condemned new violence and indicated he believes President Bashar Assad is using an April 10 deadline to pull troops and heavy weapons away from cities as "an excuse" to step up killing.

Former spy chief Omar Suleiman, a pillar of the ousted regime, decided on Friday to run in next month's presidential vote, in a surprise twist to a contest to elect Hosni Mubarak's successor.

His change of mind came after hundreds of demonstrators gathered in a Cairo district to urge Suleiman, who served as Mubarak's vice president before the strongman's overthrow last year, to contest the poll.

Thousands of people rallied in central Cairo on Friday in support of a Salafist candidate who could be ruled out of Egypt's presidential election because his mother reportedly held U.S. nationality.

Under the country's electoral law, all candidates for the presidency, their parents and their wives must have only Egyptian citizenship.

Nearly 1,500 Jordanians demonstrated on Friday across the country to demand the release of 19 detained political activists charged with insulting the king, and also calling for reforms.

In the capital Amman, more than 400 Islamists and trade unionists held a sit-in near the University of Jordan to condemn corruption and the detention of the young activists.

In the darkness, it was impossible for Umm Eddine to see her two eldest children as they trekked from Syria to Jordan. She wanted to call out, but knew any sound could attract army sniper fire.

When she set out into the cold night with her four offspring and several other families, the men smuggling them warned they must remain silent.

At least 23 people were killed as thousands of anti-regime protesters poured onto the streets across Syria on Friday despite a massive security forces presence and as troops pounded rebel towns, activists said.

Thirteen people were killed in the central province of Homs, six in Aleppo’s countryside in the north, two in the northwestern province of Idlib, one in the Damascus suburb of Douma and one in the Daraa Province town of al-Jiza in the south, the Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, reported.

Christians and Jews in the Holy Land were set to begin marking their most important festivals of the year on Friday, with Good Friday and the Jewish holiday of Passover coinciding.

Jewish families were completing last-minute preparations for Passover, which begins at sundown and commemorates the Israelite's exodus from slavery in Egypt, receipt of the Torah at Mount Sinai and eventual journey into the Promised Land.

Syria lashed out at the U.N. high commissioner for human rights on Friday, accusing her of turning a blind eye to "terrorism" funded from abroad.

Citing a foreign ministry letter to Navi Pillay, state news agency SANA said her "bias against Syria has become evident as she turns a blind eye to terrorism targeting the Syrian people at the hands of armed groups with an external funding."