The Arab League on Thursday served a new ultimatum on Damascus, giving it less than 24 hours to allow monitors into the country or face sanctions, while for the first time calling on the United Nations to help resolve the crisis.

The ultimatum, issued at the end of a crisis meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo, came amid an explosion of violence in Syria in which 32 people died, including 11 security force members and seven military pilots.

Members of Egypt's ruling military council on Thursday rejected calls to step down immediately, saying it would amount to a "betrayal" as anti-military protests entered their seventh day.

"The people have entrusted us with a mission and if we abandon it now, it would be a betrayal of the people," said General Mukthar al-Mulla, a member of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces which took power when veteran president Hosni Mubarak was ousted in February.

Eighteen members of Syria's security forces and two deserters were killed in clashes on Thursday in the flashpoint province of Homs, where at least 29 civilians also died, activists said.

"Eleven soldiers and members of the security forces were killed in skirmishes" with deserters in the town of Huleh, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Iraq on Thursday executed 16 al-Qaida members convicted of involvement in the massacre of 70 people at a wedding, although they were officially put to death for other murders, a judicial spokesman said.

"Sixteen people were executed this morning," Abdelsattar Birakdar told Agence France, adding that "all of them were al-Qaida members."

Kuwait on Thursday remanded in custody 24 opposition activists pending further investigation on charges they stormed the parliament building last week, their lawyer said.

"After interrogation all night, the public prosecutor this morning remanded them in police custody until Thursday night when questioning will resume," said Al-Humaidi al-Subaie, coordinator of the opposition defense team.

A French aid worker kidnapped in Yemen's restive south was released on Thursday, just two days after her abduction, an official told Agence France Presse.

"The Frenchwoman... was released along with two Yemenis," municipal official Hasan Ali told AFP.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal on Thursday hailed a new era of partnership between their two rival movements at talks in Cairo aimed at cementing a stalled a unity deal.

Speaking to reporters after several hours of talks, the two leaders said they had managed to iron out their differences and turn over a new page in their strained relationship.

Loyalists of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh shot dead five people in Sanaa on Thursday who had been protesting against a power transfer deal that promises him immunity from prosecution, medics said.

The five were all killed by live rounds, said the medics at a field hospital set up protesters in the capital's Change Square, where they have been camped out since February.

An influential Iran parliamentarian has said that the country has arrested twelve agents of the American Central Intelligence Agency, the country's official IRNA news agency reported.

Parviz Sorouri, who sits on the powerful committee of foreign policy and national security, that the alleged agents had been operating in coordination with Israel's Mossad and other regional agencies, and targeted the country's military and its nuclear program.

France renewed its support for humanitarian corridors in Syria on Thursday but said such a move would have to either be agreed by Damascus or come under an international mandate.

Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said on Wednesday that France would ask its EU partners to consider the idea of setting up protected escape routes for Syrian civilians fleeing the regime of Bashar Assad.