Militants bombed a major oil pipeline in northern Iraq early on Saturday, disabling it and forcing pumping to be suspended, security officials said.

Three blasts went off along the pipeline, in Nineveh province, which runs to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, according to two security officials.

Syrian air and land forces pressed efforts to crush rebel-held pockets around Damascus on Saturday, as Kurdish fighters in the country's north drove home advances against jihadist groups, monitors said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the air force carried out raids on Sbeineh, south of the capital, as regime troops shelled the town.

Shiite rebels and Sunni Islamists have stopped fighting in northern Yemeni town after reaching a ceasefire that was urged by the Red Cross, a military official said Saturday.

Three days of clashes that killed at least 11 people ended at 5:00 pm (14:00 GMT) on Friday, the official said according to the defense ministry news website 26sep.net.

Tunisia's ruling Islamist party Ennahda and the opposition were deadlocked in talks Saturday to choose a new prime minister tasked with steering the country out of a months-long political crisis.

Tensions have gripped the country since the 2011 uprising that toppled veteran dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and were exacerbated with the murder this year of two opposition politicians by suspected radical Islamists.

South Africa has slammed Israel's plans to build new settler homes in east Jerusalem as pro-Palestinian activists launched an international campaign for the release of political prisoners.

"That arrangement there in Palestine keeps us awake," South Africa's Foreign Minister Maite Nkaona-Mashabane on Friday told members of Cosatu, the largest trade union which is a political ally of the ruling ANC party.

Forty-eight Egyptian illegal immigrants who went missing in the desert of eastern Libya at the start of the week were found by the Libyan air force on Friday, a security official said.

Dozens of Egyptians entered Libya but were abandoned on Monday by smugglers on the desert road between Tobruk and Ajdabiya.

U.S. President Barack Obama said Friday that he had discussed how to work with Iraq to "push back" a surge in sectarian violence whipped up by al-Qaida.

Obama noted that the group was increasingly active in the country, and said he and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki discussed a common response, and also said Washington wanted to help build an Iraq that was "inclusive" and "democratic"

A young Moroccan tore down the Algerian flag from the roof of that country's consulate in Casablanca during a protest Friday over Western Sahara, sparking an angry protest from Algiers.

A video widely circulated on Internet sites in Morocco shows the man climbing the walls of the building to reach the flag.

The Red Cross called Friday for an "immediate" ceasefire in deadly clashes between Zaidi Shiite rebels and Sunni Islamists in northern Yemen to allow the wounded to be evacuated.

Friday's latest fighting in Saada province left one dead and seven wounded, raising to 11 the death toll since Wednesday, according to tribal officials.

Yemeni activist Tawakkol Karman said Friday she has donated her prize money as a 2011 Nobel Peace laureate to a fund for families of those killed in Yemen's uprising.

The donation has gone to the "Aid Fund for Families of Martyrs and Wounded in the (2011) Revolution," set up by President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi, she said.