Qatar has strongly condemned an al-Qaida-linked suicide attack that targeted its officials in Somalia's capital, in a statement on the official QNA news agency.

About 11 people were killed Sunday in Mogadishu when a suicide attacker from the al-Qaida-linked Shebab insurgents rammed a car laden with explosives into a convoy carrying four Qatari officials, police said.

Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in Beijing on Monday, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu due to follow him later this week.

Abbas's three-day trip -- the first by a Middle Eastern leader since Xi took office in March -- ends Tuesday, overlapping with a five-day visit to China by Netanyahu that begins in Shanghai on Monday and ends in the capital.

One man was wounded in a firefight between the security detail of Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Qandil and alleged thugs Sunday but the security service said the incident was not political in nature.

Bodyguards opened fire at a car carrying five people that had cut into the official convoy as it crossed the capital's October 6 bridge across the Nile.

Bahrain's cabinet on Sunday approved a parliamentary proposal to stop "interference" by the U.S. envoy in the kingdom's affairs, the government spokeswoman said, without clarifying what measures would be taken.

"The cabinet has approved a proposal by the parliament to put an end to the interference of U.S. Ambassador Thomas Krajeski in Bahrain's internal affairs," the official BNA news agency reported Samira Rajab as saying.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon appealed Sunday for restraint to avoid an escalation in the Syrian conflict, expressing "grave concern" over Israeli air strikes.

"The secretary-general calls on all sides to exercise maximum calm and restraint, and to act with a sense of responsibility to prevent an escalation of what is already a devastating and highly dangerous conflict," his spokesman Martin Nesirky said.

The Syrian National Coalition opposition group on Sunday condemned Israeli strikes inside Syria, saying the Jewish state had "taken advantage" of the ongoing conflict.

"The Syrian Coalition condemns the Israeli attacks," it said in a statement.

Libya's General National Congress, under pressure from militiamen, on Sunday voted through a controversial law to exclude former regime officials from government posts, a move that could see the premier removed from office.

Gunmen who had surrounded the foreign and justice ministries to press for officials from the strongman Moammar Gadhafi's regime who hold top government jobs to be sacked welcomed the vote and lifted their siege.

Algerian police beat tens of young people with batons as they protested outside parliament on Sunday about a lack of job security, and arrested several, an opposition MP said.

"This morning, almost 200 young people gathered peacefully outside parliament to make MPs aware of their difficult situation. Police beat them with their batons and arrested seven of them," said Ahmed Betatache, head of the opposition Socialist Forces Front (FFS).

Two Islamists accused of killing 500 people during Algeria's civil war, including the rape and murder of 60 women, were sentenced to death on Sunday, Agence France Press reported.

The judge sentenced Djilali Kouri, 32, and Antar Ali, 35, to death for "founding and running a terrorist group that killed and spread terror among the population and that murdered hundreds of civilians and soldiers" between 1996 and 2004.

Israeli strikes on Syrian military sites have opened the door "to all possibilities" and made the situation in the region "more dangerous," Syria's government said on Sunday.

"The government of the Syrian Arab Republic confirms that this aggression opens the door wide to all possibilities," the cabinet said in a statement read at a news conference by Information Minister Omran al-Zohbi.