Syrian security forces on Sunday shot dead two people and wounded nine others in the northwestern province of Idlib, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

"Two people were killed and another nine wounded in the Khan Sheikhoun area near Idlib (city) during an incursion by security forces and the army," Observatory head Rami Abdul Rahman told Agence France Presse by telephone.

The homes of fallen Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi's children tell of the siblings' privileged and security-conscious lives but do not display the extravagance of ex-Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's sons.

"These are the homes of Gadhafi's sons," said one rebel who gave his name as Marwan, pointing to three seafront houses in the district of Regatta on the outskirts of the capital.

Iran on Sunday sentenced to death a man accused of playing a key role in the 2010 murder of a top nuclear scientist and of spying for Israel, the official IRNA news agency reported.

"The sentence to execute the terrorist Majid Jamali Fashi ... has been issued" for the assassination of scientist Masoud Ali Mohammadi, Iran's prosecutor general Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejeie said, quoted by IRNA.

Two Syrian officers were among 18 people killed in a twin suicide bombing at a military academy in Algeria, a diplomat said Sunday.

The Algerian Defense Ministry had said 16 officers and two civilians were killed and 26 people wounded in Friday's attack on the Cherchell military academy, west of Algiers.

Syrian President Bashar Assad on Sunday issued a decree on a new media law that would ban journalists being jailed and also give them access to information, the official news agency SANA reported.

Assad "issued the legislative decree of the media law," it said, without elaborating.

A top Libyan rebel commander said on Sunday insurgent forces were 30 kilometers (18 miles) west of Moammar Gadhafi's hometown bastion of Sirte and 100 kilometers away in the east after seizing Bin Jawad.

"We took Bin Jawad today (Sunday)" on the eastern front, and "the rebel fighters from Misrata are 30 kilometers from Sirte" in the west, Mohammed al-Fortiya, the rebel commander in Misrata, told AFP.

Turkey has lost confidence in the Syrian regime as its deadly crackdown on protestors continues, the Anatolia news agency quoted President Abdullah Gul as saying on Sunday.

"Actually (the situation in Syria) reached a level that everything is too little, too late. We lost our confidence," Gul told Anatolia in an interview to mark his fourth year in office, referring to unfulfilled promises Syria's President Bashar al-Assad had made to halt the onslaught.

A delegation from the Saudi royal family arrived Saturday in Mogadishu on a one-day visit to see how best to assist the Horn of Africa country hit by famine and drought, officials said.

The delegation, led by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a nephew of King Abdullah and one of the kingdom's wealthiest men, arrived in late morning and visited camps for those displaced by the crisis and Banadir hospital, where acutely malnourished children have been dying in large numbers.

The oil-rich United Arab Emirates holds its second-ever polls next month after allowing many more citizens to vote, taking baby steps toward democracy in a state where virtually no one is pushing for quick change.

Eligible voters are picked by rulers of each of the seven sheikhdoms that comprise the UAE federation, using criteria that are not entirely clear. Candidates must come from the same hand-picked electoral college.

A rocket fired from Gaza on Sunday hit southern Israel in what was the fourth projectile lobbed across the border since a truce took hold two days earlier, Israeli officials said.

The rocket landed near Khatzerim, a village just west of the southern desert city of Beersheva, a police spokeswoman said.