U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was to hold talks Saturday evening with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after earlier discussing ways to push a new peace plan with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Public radio said Netanyahu and Kerry will have a first round of private talks and then will be joined by Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, who is also to head peace talks with Palestinians.

The death toll from religious violence in central Myanmar rose to 32 Saturday as rescuers found bodies in the ashes of homes torched during an eruption of communal unrest, officials said.

Almost 9,000 people have been displaced by Buddhist-Muslim unrest that tore through the town of Meiktila, according to the information ministry.

The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) will only pull its fighters out of Turkey once it sees concrete steps from Ankara following the outlawed group's ceasefire, a top rebel commander said Saturday.

Murat Karayilan made the warning in a video message in which he said the PKK was officially proclaiming the ceasefire which jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan called for on Thursday.

A senior Egyptian Islamist on Saturday called on France to withdraw its forces from Mali, comparing its intervention in the African state with the United States campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

France's intervention in January to rout Islamist militants amounted to "colonialism," said Rashad al-Bayoumi, the deputy leader of Egypt's ruling Muslim Brotherhood movement.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced Saturday he would visit the Palestinian territories in the next month, a day after a breakthrough apology from Israel for the deaths of nine Turks during a raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla.

"It is possible that I will visit Gaza and the West Bank during the course of this month or the next," state news agency Anatolia quoted Erdogan as telling journalists during a train trip to western Turkey.

French President Francois Hollande's office confirmed Saturday that one of the key leaders of Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Abdelhamid Abou Zeid, had been killed in fighting with French-led forces in northern Mali.

Hollande "confirms Abdelhamid Abou Zeid's death with certainty during fighting led by the French army in the Ifoghas mountains in northern Mali in late February," the Elysee palace said in a statement.

Gunmen in Yemen on Saturday killed three guards of a leader of the Houthi Shiite rebels who escaped the assassination bid in Sanaa where he is taking part in a national dialogue, witnesses said.

The gunmen opened fire at the vehicle of Abdulwahid Abu Ras, the rebel chief in the northern province of al-Jawf, in Nasr Street in the capital shortly after the morning session of the talks, witnesses said.

China's new leader Xi Jinping said Saturday his first foreign trip as president to Russia had exceeded his expectations and hailed the strong partnership between the two countries after signing numerous energy deals.

"I can say that from my point of view, my visit has already achieved its aim and the results have already far exceeded my expectations," Xi told Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in comments translated into Russian and posted on the Russian government website.

Supporters of President Bashar Assad gathered in downtown Damascus amid tight security on Saturday for the funeral of one of Syria's best-known clerics who was assassinated in a brazen mosque bombing earlier this week.

Security forces sealed off all roads leading to the eighth century Omayyad Mosque where the funeral for Sheikh Mohammed Said Ramadan al-Bouti, an 84-year-old pro-government cleric, was held.

President Bashar Assad's regime Saturday said it "categorically" rejected a U.N. Human Rights Council decision to prolong an inquiry on strife-torn Syria, calling the group's work "biased and imbalanced."

"Syria categorically rejects this decision," said an unnamed official source cited by state news agency SANA a day after the U.N. Human Rights Council passed a resolution prolonging the commission of inquiry’s work.