President Bashar Assad's forces destroyed the minaret of the historic Omari mosque where Syria's uprising erupted two years ago in the southern city of Daraa, opposition activists said on Sunday.

In amateur video footage the activists uploaded to YouTube, the mosque can be seen at the end of a street, its towering minaret toppling over after apparent shelling and crumbling into rubble and dust.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad resigned on Saturday, leaving the Palestinians without one of their most moderate and well-respected voices just as the U.S. is launching a new push for Mideast peace.

A statement from the official Palestinian news agency Wafa said President Mahmoud Abbas met with Fayyad late in the day and accepted his resignation, thanking him for his service. According to the statement, Abbas asked Fayyad to continue to serve in his post until Abbas forms a new government.

Four Italian journalists who were being held hostage in Syria have been freed, Prime Minister Mario Monti said in a statement on Saturday.

The four -- three freelancers and a reporter working for the Italian public broadcaster RAI -- had been abducted sometime between April 5 and 6 while out filming in northern Syria.

Security forces in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip have started arresting suspected "collaborators" with Israel after a month-long amnesty ended, a Hamas official said on Saturday.

"Since yesterday (Friday), we arrested several collaborators with the Israeli occupation," Interior Ministry spokesman Islam Shahwan told AFP, declining to give a number.

Israel has rejected appeals to release a Palestinian prisoner on a life-endangering long-term hunger strike to the West Bank, Palestinian prisoner affairs minister Issa Qaraqea told AFP on Saturday.

Qaraqea said that Israeli officials told him on Saturday that Samer Issawi, who has intermittently refused food for more than eight months, "is in critical condition and might die at any moment."

The judge in the retrial of Egyptian former President Hosni Mubarak recused himself on Saturday, in a chaotic opening hearing that lasted just seconds and saw a proud and combative Mubarak smile and wave in the dock.

Judge Mostafa Hassan Abdallah told the court he would send the case to the Court of Appeal, which will then refer the trial to a new circuit, sending the fate of the ousted strongman back to square one.

A planned meeting Saturday between Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to try to resolve a damaging dispute has been postponed until at least next week, Palestinian officials said.

It has been put back until after a visit by Abbas to Kuwait on Monday, an official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Egypt's President Mohammed Morsi and the military have closed ranks to deny charges that soldiers had killed and tortured protesters, following leaks of an inquiry report implicating officers.

Defense Minister Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, who is also army chief, denied in a televised statement aired Friday that the military had committed abuses, after talks with Morsi, who named the fact-finding inquiry last year.

British military scientists have found forensic evidence that chemical weapons have been used in the conflict in Syria, the Times newspaper reported on Saturday.

A soil sample thought to have been taken from an area close to Damascus and smuggled back to Britain has provided proof that "some kind of chemical weapon" had been fired, it quoted defense sources as saying.

Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird's meeting with an Israeli minister in annexed Arab East Jerusalem this week was a "slap in the face" to Palestinians, a Palestinian official said Friday.

Baird met Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, lead peace negotiator in Israel's cabinet, at her office in east Jerusalem on Tuesday, in a move normally avoided by visiting diplomats because it could be seen as legitimizing Israel's controversial annexation.