Israeli authorities warned citizens on Saturday to leave Egypt's Sinai peninsula immediately because of a "critical and immediate threat" of a terrorist attack.

"All Israelis in the Sinai are called upon to leave the region and return to Israel," said a statement from the anti-terrorist bureau.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon has expressed serious concern over the repercussions of the Syrian crisis on the security and political situation in Lebanon.

In his semi-annual report on the implementation of U.N. Security Council resolution 1559, Ban condemned the violence along the Lebanese-Syrian border which has inflicted scores of casualties.

The last 10 pro-Palestinian activists who were in Israel as part of the "flytilla" campaign were on Friday deported to France, an interior ministry spokeswoman told Agence France Presse.

"Ten French pro-Palestinian activists were released from the prison in which they were detained and boarded a plane bound for Paris at 1300 local time (1000 GMT)," Sabine Haddad said.

An 18-year-old Palestinian shepherd was seriously wounded by Israeli gunfire in the northern West Bank, Palestinian security sources said on Friday.

Yasser Kaabneh, 18, was tending his sheep north of Tubas in the Jordan Valley on Thursday night when he received a bullet wound to the chest, the sources said, adding the area was regularly used by the Israeli army for training.

The formation of an oil authority is absent from the agenda of a cabinet session on Friday but progress is being made to speed up exploration of potential offshore gas and oil reserves.

The authority is tasked with overseeing the petroleum sector for the purpose of exploring the reserves.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Hizbullah and other Iranian proxies would suffer if Syrian President Bashar Assad was overthrown.

"Assad's fall would be a major blow to Iran... it would weaken dramatically both Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza. It would be very positive," Barak told CNN on Thursday.

Millions of Israelis on Thursday stood silently and all road traffic stopped as sirens wailed for two minutes to remember the six million Jews who were killed during the Nazi Holocaust.

The annual ritual, which is observed at 10 am (0700 GMT), is a central part of Holocaust Memorial Day which began at sundown on Wednesday.

Egypt's grand mufti visited Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque on Wednesday, a senior Muslim official said, despite claims by an internationally prominent cleric that such visits are a sop to Israel.

Azzam al-Khatib said Ali Gomaa, Egypt's highest religious authority, "came for a religious visit to Al-Aqsa mosque" along with Jordan's Prince Ghazi bin Mohammed, King Abdullah II's cousin and advisor on religious issues.

The remains of five corpses, likely to belong to Syrian soldiers, were found in the Jezzine town of Kfarhouna on Wednesday, reported Voice of Lebanon radio.

It said that the soldiers were probably killed during Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

UNIFIL commander Maj. Gen. Paolo Serra said the continued Israeli occupation of the Lebanese side of the border village of Ghajar has political reasons.

In remarks to al-Joumhouria newspaper on Wednesday, Serra said: “The problem of Ghajar is political more than military.”