Syrian forces ambushed and killed nine army deserters in a north Damascus suburb on Monday, a human rights watchdog said, as NATO ruled out military action against the regime of President Bashar Assad.

The latest violence in Syria comes after a rocket-propelled grenade exploded on Sunday near U.N. observers in a Damascus suburb, and at least 48 people were killed elsewhere in the country.

A Yemeni soldier packing powerful explosives under his uniform blew himself up in the middle of an army battalion in Sanaa Monday, killing 96 troops and wounding around 300, a military official and medics said.

The suicide attack was the deadliest in the country's capital since newly-elected President Abdrabuh Mansour Hadi pledged to oust al-Qaida militants from Yemen's mostly lawless and restive southern and eastern provinces.

A rocket-propelled grenade exploded near a team of U.N. observers in a Damascus suburb on Sunday, the military said, as clashes between regime troops and armed rebels raged in and around the Syrian capital and at least 21 people were killed across the country.

No one was hurt in the Douma blast, which came as U.N. truce mission head Major General Robert Mood and peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous were leading a team of observers around the north Damascus suburb, an Agence France Presse correspondent at the scene said.

The United Nations said on Sunday that 480 Palestinian refugees have fled Syria to Jordan since the start of a revolt against President Bashar Assad's regime last year.

"The U.N. Relief and Works Agency have registered 480 Palestinian refugees who have sought refuge in Jordan since the beginning of the crisis in Syria," UNRWA spokeswoman, Anwar Abu Sakina, told AFP.

Ankara on Sunday reprimanded an Iraqi rally against its consulate in Basra, where protesters burnt Turkish flags after Turkey refused to hand over their fugitive vice president, Anatolia reported.

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu condemned "the ugly behavior against the Turkish flag in a demo apparently manipulated by impertinent individuals," in a phone conversation with his Iraqi counterpart Hoshyar Zebari.

Syrian troops killed a civilian and an army defector, a watchdog said, adding that anti-regime demonstrations were held in several areas of northwestern and central Syria on Sunday.

"A civilian was killed after he suffered gunshot wounds from regime troops, who were raiding Hasraya village" in the central province of Homs, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Right said.

Lawyers for Iraq's fugitive Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, a Sunni who is accused of running a death squad, on Sunday withdrew from the case, on the grounds their appeals had been rejected.

The vice president, last known to be in Turkey, is the subject of an Interpol red notice calling for his arrest but says he fears for his life in Baghdad. He is being tried in absentia on charges he says are politically motivated.

Clashes between the army and Al-Qaida militants on the outskirts of the Islamist stronghold of Jaar in southern Yemen left 18 people dead overnight, military and tribal sources said on Sunday.

"Violent clashes on Jaar's western outskirts between the army and Al-Qaida are continuing," a military official said.

Two high-ranking Syrian officials denied in interviews with state television on Sunday reports by pan-Arab channels that they along with four other regime stalwarts had been assassinated.

The interviews came after satellite channels Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya broadcast an amateur video showing an unidentified man claiming a rebel group's responsibility for killing the six officials.

Israeli ministers were holding a special cabinet meeting at Ammunition Hill on Sunday to celebrate Jerusalem Day when the Jewish state captured the Arab eastern sector 45 years ago during the Six-Day War.

Celebrations were lined up throughout the day with formal ceremonies, parties and the annual flag march through east Jerusalem to mark the "reunification" of the city which took place after the 1967 Middle East war.