Yemen's Ali Abdullah Saleh stepped down after 33 years at the helm on Tuesday at a ceremony at the presidential palace in Sanaa, formally handing power over to his deputy, Abdrabuh Mansour Hadi.

"I hand over the banner of revolution... to safe hands," said Saleh, the fourth veteran Arab leader to fall in just over a year, standing beside Hadi.

The wife of a photographer injured in an army bombardment in the Syrian city of Homs on Sunday called on Britain to rescue her husband despite the government deeming the mission too dangerous.

British photographer Paul Conroy and French reporter Edith Bouvier were wounded in the attack Wednesday which claimed the life of American war correspondent Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik.

Qatar urged the United Nations on Sunday to investigate Jewish settlement expansion in annexed Arab east Jerusalem, warning that Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories was unacceptable.

"We must act quickly to stop the Judaization of Jerusalem," said Qatar's emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, at the International Conference on Jerusalem in Doha.

The opposition Syrian National Council extended a hand Sunday to President Bashar al-Assad's Alawite community, warning of regime attempts to "drive a wedge" between religious groups.

"The regime has tried, since the beginning of the revolution, to fragment Syrian society and drive a wedge" between the different communities, the SNC said in a statement.

There is "every possibility" that Syria could descend into a civil war which could be worsened by foreign intervention, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the BBC on Sunday.

"I think that there's every possibility of a civil war. Outside intervention would not prevent that -- it would probably expedite it," Clinton said in an interview conducted in Rabat, Morocco.

Yemeni troops killed five suspected al-Qaida militants early on Sunday in an artillery attack in the southern city of Zinjibar, a local official said.

"The army launched an attack on several (al-Qaida) positions ... leaving five dead and several others wounded," the official told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.

The Egypt trial of dozens of democracy activists including Americans on charges of receiving illegal funding began in a packed courtroom on Sunday, despite Washington's insistence that the charges be dropped.

A prosecutor in the court in a Cairo suburb read out the charges against the defendants, saying their acceptance of illicit foreign funds had "detracted from the sovereignty of the Egyptian state."

The International Committee of the Red Cross resumed negotiations on Sunday with the Syrian authorities and opposition groups on evacuating the wounded from Homs' besieged Baba Amr district, a day after talks collapsed, the ICRC said.

"The negotiations that were suspended on Saturday evening resumed this morning with strong determination to see them succeed," said a Western diplomat in Damascus.

The U.N. Human Rights Council's annual session opens Monday determined to put more pressure on Syria's hardline regime after publication of a list of officials suspected of crimes against humanity.

"We want Syrian authorities to give up being in denial," said one diplomat. The Human Rights Council must "continue to put pressure on Syrian authorities.”

Syrian regime forces killed 55 civilians in clashes and shelling across the country Sunday, while at least 14 soldiers loyal to President Bashar Assad also died, activists and a rights group said.

Twenty-three people were killed in the central opposition bastion of Homs, nine in the central province of Hama, seven in the southern province of Daraa, 11 in the northwestern province of Idlib, three in the Damascus neighborhood of Kfarsouseh and two in the restive suburbs around Damascus, the Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said.