Turkey urged the Syrian government Sunday to halt deadly attacks on civilians and use peaceful methods to end the unrest.

"Turkey one more time repeats its call for the Syrian government to stop the (military) operations and choose political methods, dialogue and peaceful initiatives for a solution," the foreign ministry said in a statement carried by Anatolia news agency.

U.S. President Barack Obama said he was "appalled" by Syria's crackdown on Sunday which activists say killed nearly 140 people and vowed to step up pressure on President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

In a statement, Obama saluted demonstrators who have taken to the streets as "courageous" and said Syria "will be a better place when a democratic transition goes forward."

Libya's rebels routed a militia group accused of assassinating their military chief and of links to Moammar Gadhafi, they said, after an hours-long battle Sunday in their Benghazi stronghold.

Medics and rebels said at least four rebel and 11 pro-Gadhafi fighters were killed in the fierce shootout, which erupted around dawn during a raid on the cell holed up at a roadside factory in the eastern city.

As reports of a brutal military crackdown on the flashpoint protest city of Hama unfurled on Sunday, Britain, Germany, France and Italy condemned the violence while a U.S. diplomat said it was "full-on warfare."

Syrian forces killed nearly 140 people on Sunday including 100 when the army stormed Hama to crush dissent on the eve of Ramadan, activists said.

A group of Libyans stoned a border post in southern Tunisia after a row with a Tunisian customs officer Sunday, an interior ministry spokesman said.

"Libyans hurled stones at sentry booths at the customs post following a dispute between a Tunisian customs officer and a Libyan who was returning home," spokesman Mohammed Hichem Meddeb told Agence France Presse.

The head of the Cairo Criminal Court has vowed a speedy trial for ousted president Hosni Mubarak, the official MENA news agency reported on Sunday.

Judge Ahmed Refaat said Mubarak's trial, which starts on Wednesday, would be aired live on Egyptian television to "reassure people of the (credibility of the) process".

Libyan rebels on Sunday took the village of Josh at the foot of the Nafusa mountain range in the west of the country, AFP journalists said.

"We took Josh this morning and are now heading west. Now we're fighting to take Tiji" further down the valley, Juma Brahim, head of the rebel fighters' operational command in the Nafusa region, told AFP.

Leaders from Sudan and South Sudan signed an agreement Saturday in Addis Ababa to assign 300 Ethiopian troops to monitor the border separating the two countries.

The U.N.-sanctioned troops are tasked with reporting and resolving disputes along the border. They will be assigned from the disputed Abyei region, where the first of 4,200 Ethiopian peacekeepers arrived last week.

Egypt turned back 450 travelers seeking to cross at the Rafah border point after an attack on a Sinai police station, Hamas officials said on Sunday.

The Hamas-run interior ministry said that the 450 would-be travelers, some of them patients seeking medical treatment, were turned back at the border on Saturday.

At least 145 people were killed on Sunday, among them 113 in the flashpoint protest city of Hama, when the Syrian military stormed several cities across the country, the National Organization for Human Rights said.

Activists said it was one of deadliest days in Syria since demonstrators first took to the streets on March 15 demanding democratic reforms before turning their wrath on the regime and calling for its ouster.