Eight NATO protesters were arrested Monday ahead of a weekend summit when they refused to leave the Chicago office tower which houses President Barack Obama's campaign headquarters, police said.

"They're starting early," Officer Robert Perez of the Chicago police department told Agence France Presse.

Violent clashes between rival clans in Tunisia have left 18 people injured, one of them seriously, the TAP agency reported on Monday.

The clashes occurred Sunday night and Monday morning in the Feriana region in the center-west of the north African country and erupted over a dispute over iron trafficking from neighboring Algeria, according to the interior ministry.

Gulf leaders agreed Monday to allow more time for further discussions over a Saudi proposal to turn the six-nation council into a union likely to start with the kingdom and unrest-hit Bahrain.

The leaders who met in Riyadh have instructed their foreign ministers to "continue studying the report of the special commission," said Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal.

Egyptian police raided the Cairo office of Iranian television channel, Al-Alam, confiscating its equipment after it was found to be operating without license, a security source said on Monday.

The raid was carried out on Sunday and the head of Al-Alam's Cairo office, Ahmed Sioufi, was charged with working without an official permit, the source said.

EU foreign ministers on Monday issued a harsh critique of Israel, saying the gathering pace of settlement-building, settler extremism and ill-treatment of Palestinians threatens a two-state solution.

"The EU expresses deep concern about developments on the ground which threaten to make a two-state solution impossible," the bloc's 27 ministers said in a statement issued during talks in Brussels.

Iranian MPs on Monday condemned a planned union between Saudi Arabia and fellow Sunni-ruled Bahrain, news agencies reported.

"Bahraini and Saudi rulers must understand that this unwise decision will only strengthen the Bahraini people's resolve against the forces of occupation," they said in a letter, referring to Saudi military support for Manama.

Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike have agreed a deal with Israel to end their fast in exchange for an easing of their conditions, Palestinian and Israeli officials said on Monday.

"All of the factions signed an agreement to end the strike," Qadura Fares, head of the Palestinian Prisoners Club told Agence France Presse after several hours of negotiations between prison officials and the senior detainees at Ashkelon jail.

Hizbullah may not want a new war with Israel but an order to attack would come from Tehran in the event of a strike on Iran, a senior military official in Israel's northern command told Agence France Presse.

And should another conflict break out between Israel and the Lebanese group, it would be "much faster" than the 34-day war of 2006, said the official, who asked not to be identified.

Chancellor Angela Merkel acknowledged Monday that her party's heavy losses in a key regional German vote was a "bitter, painful defeat", but stressed it had no bearing on her belt-tightening policy in Europe.

"The work in Europe is not affected" by the historic defeat suffered by her Christian Democrats (CDU) in Sunday's snap poll in Germany's most populous state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Merkel told a news conference.

The Syrian conflict has bred the emergence of obscure jihadists carrying out bloody attacks, either acting independently or manipulated by the regime seeking to tarnish the image of its opposition, analysts say.

"Al-Qaeda does not exist in Syria. But there are at present several splinter groups of jihadists who employ the same strategies," said Mathieu Guidere, a France-based analyst who specializes in the Arab and Muslim world.