Qatari authorities have restored several government websites attacked by hackers from the Syrian Electronic Army, who support President Bashar Assad's regime, local media reported Sunday.

Qatar's Supreme Council of Information and Technology (ictQatar) said in a statement carried by local media that it has "recovered all government websites hacked on Saturday."

A suicide bomber blew up a truck packed with explosives at an army checkpoint in Syria's central city of Hama Sunday, killing at least 31 people, a monitoring group said.

"At least 31 people, including regime troops, were killed when a man detonated a truck laden with explosives at a checkpoint near an agricultural vehicles company on the road linking Hama to Salamiyeh," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The founder of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdel Rahman, rages at the "hypocrisy" of the international community in focusing on chemical weapons and overlooking the "endless bloodbath" in war-ravaged Syria.

Day after day, from a base in the drab central English city of Coventry, the exiled Rahman and his volunteers have counted the human toll of Syria's civil war ever since the conflict erupted in March 2011.

Arab nations on Saturday appealed to Saudi Arabia to reverse a decision to reject a seat on the U.N. Security Council.

Arab U.N. ambassadors made the appeal after an emergency meeting on Saudi Arabia's surprise announcement Friday that it would not take up a Security Council seat to protest the body's handling of the Syria war and other conflicts.

The U.N.'s humanitarian chief called Saturday for a cessation of hostilities in a Damascus suburb besieged for months by Syrian army, so that food and vital medical aid can be delivered.

Although some 3,000 people were evacuated last week, "the same number or more remain trapped," the U.N.'s Valerie Amos said in a statement, noting that continued shelling and fighting hinder aid workers from reaching the needy in the town of Moadamiyet al-Sham.

Belgium on Saturday charged an 18-year-old for belonging to a radical Islamist group one day after he returned from an eight-month trip to Syria, the federal prosecutor said.

Jejoen Bontinck, a Belgian citizen, was charged by a judge in Antwerp following police questioning, and subsequently remanded in custody, the prosecutor said, according to the Belga local news agency.

U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said "intense efforts" were under way to convene Syrian peace talks, as he met with Egyptian officials Saturday at the start of a regional tour.

The international pointman for efforts to end Syria's nearly three-year civil war aims to garner regional support for a peace conference that world powers hope to convene in Geneva next month.

Egypt is in talks with Libya to secure the release of more than 20 Egyptian drivers seized by militias in the neighboring country, the foreign ministry said Saturday.

Egyptian Ambassador Mohammed Abu Bakr is in "intense contacts with Libyan authorities and several local chieftains to secure the release of Egyptian drivers kidnapped by armed men" in the eastern city of Ajdabiya, ministry spokesman Badr Abdelatty said in remarks on the government's website.

Tunisian security forces killed nine "terrorists" and seized two tonnes of explosives Saturday in a military operation near where two policemen were killed two days earlier, the defense ministry said.

The nine were killed in the Mount Taouyer area of the Beja region, some 70 kilometers (40 miles) west of Tunis, spokesman Taoufik Rahmouni was quoted as saying by the official TAP news agency.

Tunisia's ruling Islamists and opposition parties are to start a national dialogue Wednesday to end the country's political stalemate, crisis mediators and members of the opposition have said.

This comes two weeks after the ruling Islamist party Ennahda agreed to stand down by late October in a roadmap to form a government of independents.