Palestinians and Arab Israelis commemorated on Sunday Land Day with rallies remembering six of their number who were shot dead during a 1976 demonstration against land seizure.

In the northern Israeli town of Arraba, thousands of people turned out for the main demonstration, many waving Palestinian flags, an Agence France Presse correspondent said.

The board of Iraq's election commission withdrew its collective resignation Sunday, partly after an appeal from the United Nations mission to Baghdad, state television and a diplomatic source said.

The nine-member board of the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) had resigned en masse over alleged parliamentary and judicial interference on Tuesday, sparking concern a general election due to be held on April 30 could be delayed.

Egypt is to hold a presidential election on May 26-27, 10 months after the army ousted Islamist leader Mohammed Morsi from the presidency, the electoral commission announced on Sunday.

Retired army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who toppled Morsi, is widely expected to win the vote, riding on a wave of popularity for having removed the divisive president last July.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday slammed a U.N. rights body for a string of resolutions condemning the Jewish state despite a wave of rights abuses elsewhere in the region.

"At the end of last week, the U.N. Human Rights Council condemned Israel five times, at a time when the slaughter in Syria is continuing, innocent people are being hung in the Middle East and human rights are being eroded," he told ministers at the weekly cabinet meeting.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday it would be clear within "days" whether the crisis-hit peace talks would be extended beyond an April 29 deadline, local media reported.

His remarks, which were reported by several Israeli news websites, come as US officials work around the clock to prevent a collapse of the negotiations over a dispute about Palestinian prisoners.

Attacks in Sunni-majority areas of Iraq killed nine people Sunday, exactly a month before parliamentary polls with violence at its worst since the country emerged from a bloody sectarian conflict.

The latest violence came hours after seven soldiers were shot dead at a checkpoint in a late-night attack by militants in the north, the latest in a surge in bloodshed that has killed more than 2,200 people already this year.

Two members of Yemen's auxiliary Popular Resistance Committees were killed in an overnight ambush by presumed al-Qaida members in the south, a member of the pro-government militia said on Sunday.

He said the men were gunned down on the road between Loder and Moudia northeast of Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan province.

Two Spanish journalists taken hostage in Syria by an al-Qaida-linked group walked free after six months in captivity and were heading back to Spain on Sunday, their friends and colleagues said.

El Mundo correspondent Javier Espinosa, 49, and freelance photographer Ricardo Garcia Vilanova, 42, were "freed and handed over to the Turkish military", the Spanish newspaper said on its website.

Israeli police used force on Saturday to break up a Palestinian protest march in occupied east Jerusalem, injuring several people including two journalists, news photographers said.

Several demonstrators and four journalists -- among them a photographer from Agence France-Presse and another from Reuters -- were slightly injured by projectiles fired by police during the incident, near the walled Old City's Damascus Gate.

An Egyptian court on Saturday sentenced to death two supporters of deposed president Mohammed Morsi convicted of throwing youths off an apartment block roof, judicial sources said.

One youth thrown from the building in Alexandria was killed. The court submitted its verdict for approval to the mufti, the government's official interpreter of Islamic law, the sources said.