The head of the dissident Free Syrian Army charged in remarks published Sunday that al-Qaida has links with the powerful airforce intelligence of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

"If al-Qaida militants have indeed entered the country, it happened with the cooperation of that agency," FSA chief, Colonel Riyadh al-Asaad, told Kuwait's Al-Rai newspaper.

Fighting between Syrian regime forces and armed rebels and deadly raids killed nine people Sunday, including seven civilians, as a tenuous U.N.-backed ceasefire entered its second month, monitors and activists said.

The fresh bloodshed and clashes came as the U.N. mission in Syria said it now has 176 military observers on the ground, more than half its planned strength of 300.

The United States has reduced -- and may phase out entirely -- a multi-billion-dollar police training program that was to have been the centerpiece of a hugely expanded civilian mission in Iraq, The New York Times reported Sunday.

Citing unnamed State Department officials, the newspaper said that what was originally envisioned as a training cadre of about 350 U.S. law enforcement officers in Iraq was quickly scaled back to 190 and then to 100.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has hailed Algeria's elections, despite widespread suspicion over results that saw the regime tighten its grip on power, bucking the Arab Spring trend of change.

Official results from Thursday's legislative election showed a higher-than-expected turnout of 42 percent, with the party that has ruled Algeria since independence 50 years ago winning comfortably and Islamists losing ground.

Gulf leaders at a meeting in Riyadh on Monday will discuss a Saudi proposal to develop their six-nation council into a union, likely to start with the kingdom and unrest-hit Bahrain, officials said.

The Gulf Cooperation Council leaders "will discuss a form of union between Saudi Arabia and Bahrain," said a top Gulf official, requesting anonymity.

Bahraini security forces fires tear gas and birdshot on Saturday to disperse protests staged in Shiite villages in solidarity with jailed opposition activists, witnesses said.

Dozens took to the streets in several villages following calls by the February 14 Coalition -- a youth group that works mainly on cyber social networks with no public leaders.

A U.S. drone killed five suspected members of al-Qaida in two rocket attacks on vehicles transporting the jihadists near Marib in eastern Yemen, a tribal chief said.

"A drone fired two rockets at two vehicles, killing five al-Qaida members," near the village of al-Hosoon, outside the city of Marib, 170 kilometers east of the capital Sanaa, he said.

Hamas foreign minister Mohammed Awad was in Tehran on Saturday for meetings with senior officials including Iran's top diplomat and a security chief, Iranian media reported.

During his visit, which had been unannounced, Awad met with Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi and Saeed Jalili, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, the reports said.

Turkey's ambassador to Syria said on Saturday the people of that country were being "fed with fears" about their fate should Bashar Assad's regime fall.

Speaking at the Lennart Meri Conference in the Estonian capital Tallinn, ambassador Omer Onhon decried conditions for the majority of Syrians, who he said have been led to believe the only alternative to Assad's authoritarian regime is civil war and religious radicalization.

Yemeni troops launched an all-out offensive on Saturday to retake the southern city of Zinjibar, held for a year by al-Qaida gunmen, in fighting that killed 12 people, military and local sources said.

The "wide offensive" began from three sides and is supported by the air force and the navy," said a military official, adding that Defense Minister Mohammed Nasser Ahmed is supervising the operation from nearby.