Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi spoke by telephone with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Saturday, the fifth day of protests calling for the end of Mubarak's regime, the Libyan news agency Jana reported.

Without giving details of their conversation, the news agency said Gaddafi called Mubarak "to reassure himself on the situation in Egypt."

Israel repatriated families of its diplomats in Egypt on Saturday in response to the unprecedented street protests in the Arab state with which it has a 1979 peace deal, the foreign ministry said.

"A special aircraft brought back to Israel on Saturday the families of diplomats and other official envoys, as well as about 40 Israelis on private visits to Cairo who wished to leave," said ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor.

Thousands of people have joined a Facebook group calling for anti-government protests across Sudan on Sunday, the day preliminary results are due out on the vote on southern independence.

Entitled "January 30, a word to the Sudanese youth," the Facebook site shows an angry protestor holding an Arabic placard that reads: "A better Sudan."

Embattled Hosni Mubarak tapped Egypt's military intelligence chief as his first-ever vice president and named a new prime minister as tens of thousands took their deadly revolt to the streets on Saturday for a fifth day demanding that the president step down.

Fresh riots erupted in several cities. In Cairo, three people were killed, and an enraged mob killed three police in the Sinai town of Rafah.

The Egyptian government has resigned, state television announced on Saturday, hours after President Hosni Mubarak said amid nationwide protests that a new cabinet would be appointed during the day.

Mubarak had also pledged reforms after four days of nationwide revolt against his decades-long autocratic rule.

Iran's first nuclear power plant will be ready to generate electricity on April 9, atomic energy chief Ali Akbar Salehi said on Friday, in signs of yet another delay.

"We hope that on Farvardin 20 (April 9) ... we will witness the connection of the plant to the national grid," Salehi was quoted by the ISNA news agency as saying.

Riot police and hundreds of protesters clashed in the Tunisian capital Friday, as a new cabinet was sworn into office in a bid to end the unrest that has followed president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's ouster.

Security forces fired warning shots and tear gas, as some groups threw stones in the main government quarter where protesters have remained camped out in front of Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi's offices for five days.

Thousands of Jordanians demonstrated peacefully in Amman and other cities after weekly prayers on Friday to press for political and economic reform, and demanding that the government resign.

"Egypt, the Arab nation salutes you. We urge your men to get rid of (President Hosni) Mubarak," an estimated 3,000 people chanted as they marched in Amman city center holding national flags.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas made a "historic mistake" by rebuffing a peace offer made during negotiations in 2008.

Excerpts from an upcoming memoir by Olmert were published Friday in the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot.

A massive car bomb ripped through a funeral ceremony in a Shiite district of Baghdad on Thursday, killing 37 people in the worst day of violence in the Iraqi capital in more than two months.

The blast was the deadliest in a series of bombings that claimed 42 lives across the city, and is the latest in a spate of violence in the past two weeks that has already killed more people this month than all attacks in December.