At least 161 students have been hit by food poisoning at Cairo's prestigious Al-Azhar University, in the second such incident this month, prompting President Mohammed Morsi to call on Tuesday for an investigation.

The Health Ministry said the students had been hospitalized after eating tuna salad served on Monday at the university's canteen.

Tunisia's ousted president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali on Tuesday was handed a third life sentence since he fled to Saudi Arabia in January 2011 during a mass uprising against his rule.

The military court in Sfax, southeast Tunisia, convicted Ben Ali over the violent repression of protests in the region during the revolution in which one person died and two others were injured, the official TAP news agency reported.

Gunmen demanding the sacking of former officials of the ousted Gadhafi regime surrounded the justice ministry on Tuesday, stepping up an action started at the Foreign Ministry, an official said.

"Several armed men in vehicles equipped with anti-aircraft guns surrounded the Ministry of Justice," spokesman Walid Ben Rabha told AFP.

A rebel victory in Syria's civil war would be the most positive outcome for Israel despite fears of instability and a stronger jihadist presence on the Golan should the regime collapse, analysts say.

The Syrian conflict has increasingly affected the Jewish state, as alarm mounts over the deployment of President Bashar Assad's chemical weapons arsenal and the potential for it to fall into the hands of non-state militant groups.

A blast in the central Damascus district of Marjeh on Tuesday killed at least 13 people, Syrian state television reported, a day after Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi survived a bomb attack elsewhere in the capital.

"The number of casualties in the cowardly terrorist blast targeting the commercial and historic center of Damascus in the Marjeh district rose to 13 martyrs and more than 70 injured," state television reported, citing the interior ministry.

An Israeli air strike on Gaza City killed one person and wounded another on Tuesday, Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry said.

"A man in his 20s was martyred and another injured in an Israeli air strike... in Shati refugee camp in western Gaza City," health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra told Agence France Presse.

Activists said Tuesday that at least 15 opposition fighters have been killed in a battle with Syrian government troops for a military helicopter base in the country's north.

The Britain-based Observatory for Human Rights said fighting between rebels and President Bashar Assad's troops is raging around the Mannagh base in the northern province of Aleppo.

Israel on Tuesday welcomed a shift in the terms of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative following top-level talks in Washington, with the proposal now endorsing the idea of mutually-agreed land swaps with the Palestinians.

The principle of land swaps has been affirmed by Israel and the Palestinians in previous rounds of talks but has never formed part of the Saudi initiative.

Saudi police arrested an activist wanted on security-related charges after a gunfight in the kingdom's Eastern province, scene to sporadic protests since early 2011, the interior ministry said.

Abdullah al-Asreeh, one of 23 activists on a wanted list for allegedly fomenting trouble in the eastern region, was arrested along with an unarmed man who faces charges of selling drugs and alcohol, the ministry said late Monday.

Kuwait has deported 213 foreigners over the past few days for committing "grave" traffic offenses as part of a drive to reduce accidents, a senior interior ministry official said in comments published on Tuesday.

"We have deported 213 expatriates during the past few days for violating traffic rules and committing grave offenses," interior ministry assistant undersecretary for traffic affairs Major General Abdulfattah al-Ali told al-Anbaa newspaper.