Spain announced Thursday it had seized 28 million euros ($37 million) in financial products, luxury cars and buildings linked to ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.

Egypt requested Spain's help under U.N. anti-corruption conventions to find and block assets owned by Mubarak, his family, top aides and their related companies, a national police statement said.

Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime appears likely to fall within weeks, a senior minister in Iraq, whose country has avoided publicly taking sides in Syria's conflict, told AFP on Thursday.

"There is a real acceleration regarding the international community focusing on Syria... real concern about the using of chemical weapons," Finance Minister Rafa al-Essawi said on the sidelines of a meeting with the International Monetary Fund in Amman.

Israel's attorney general on Thursday charged Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman with fraud and breach of trust, just over five weeks before a snap election, but dropped more serious allegations against him.

"After examining the file, I have arrived at the conclusion that there is insufficient evidence to charge him in the first case and have decided to close it," Yehuda Weinstein said in a statement.

"I am not a mercenary," said a Spanish former air force officer who left family and a spiraling economic crisis behind at home to travel to Syria and train insurgents fighting troops loyal to President Bashar Assad.

"I could see on television what was happening in Syria... I've never been able to handle watching children get killed without reacting," said Luis Munar, who entered Syria via the Bab al-Hawa border crossing on the Turkish frontier.

Thousands of Palestinians attended a rare Hamas rally in the northern West Bank city of Nablus on Thursday, celebrating the group's "victory" over Israel in Gaza.

The rally is the first time that the West Bank's ruling Palestinian Authority -- which is dominated by the Fatah faction, Hamas's bitter rival -- have allowed such a gathering since 2007.

A former Syrian officer who served in a battalion specializing in surface-to-surface missiles told AFP on Thursday regime forces had fired Scuds three days ago, but the government has denied this.

First Lieutenant Aaraba Idriss said he is still in contact with officers and members of his former Battalion 57, part of Brigade 155, despite defecting 10 months ago.

Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime is approaching collapse and he should take steps to begin talks on a political transition, NATO head Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Thursday.

"I think the regime in Damascus is approaching collapse ... it is only a question of time," Rasmussen said, adding that Assad should "initiate a process that leads to the accommodation of the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people."

Saudi King Abdullah left hospital on Thursday, nearly a month after undergoing back surgery, the royal court announced.

The 89-year-old monarch left the King Abdul Aziz Medical City in Riyadh on Thursday afternoon, the court said in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency.

Thousands of Palestinians in Hebron on Thursday mourned the death of a teenager killed by Israeli forces on his birthday after he allegedly threatened them with a toy gun.

Sixteen-year-old Mohamed Ziad Salayma was shot dead on Wednesday evening at an Israeli checkpoint in the southern West Bank city.

Abdessalam Yassine, spiritual leader of Morocco's radical Justice and Charity Islamist movement and outspoken opponent of the monarchy, died on Thursday aged 84, the banned but tolerated group's spokesman told AFP.

The founder of the movement, known as Adl wal Ihsan in Arabic, died at around 0730 GMT, Fathallah Arsalane said.