A Saudi court handed two Saudi women 10-month jail sentences on Saturday for seeking to help a Canadian woman who wanted to leave her Saudi husband with their children, human rights activists said.

The court also banned Fawzia al-Ayuni and Wajiha al-Huaider from leaving the kingdom for two years, rights activist Aql al-Bahli said.

Shiite rebels in Yemen known as Zaidis said on Saturday several of their men arrested during clashes with police in Sanaa have been freed under an "arrangement".

"The authorities have released a number of detainees, members of Ansarullah (Supporters of God)," their spokesman Ali al-Bukhaiti told Agence France Presse.

A deadly rocket attack on Saturday struck a camp near Baghdad housing Iranian exiles, the U.N. said, the second such assault on the group this year as its members await resettlement outside Iraq.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack involving at least half a dozen mortar rounds, which came as Iran tallied ballot papers from Friday's presidential election there.

Regime forces bombarded rebel positions in Damascus and its surroundings on Saturday with air raids and artillery fire, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

"Air raids targeted parts of Jubar... and Barzeh," two neighborhoods on the eastern outskirts of the Syrian capital where rebels and government forces have battled for months.

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon has called for tougher sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program regardless of who is elected as its new president, public radio reported on Saturday.

The report came as partial results from Friday's election gave a clear lead to moderate Hassan Rowhani, who headed Iran's nuclear negotiating team under reformist president Mohammad Khatami in the early 2000s and has pledged to engage more with the international community.

Russia said on Saturday there was no need for Syrian President Bashar Assad to use chemical weapons against rebels because his forces were making steady advances on the ground.

"The regime, as the opposition is saying out in the open, is enjoying military success on the ground," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters during a joint press appearance with his Italian counterpart Emma Bonino.

King Abdullah was back in Saudi Arabia on Saturday after flying home early from a convalescence stay in Morocco to follow events, as the Syrian conflict intensifies, state media reported.

The king flew back on Friday evening from Morocco, where he had been staying since May 31, "because of the turn of events that the region is currently going through," the official SPA news agency said.

Clashes between Libyan elite forces and gunmen killed six soldiers in Benghazi on Saturday, the army said, in the latest bout of unrest as the government struggles to control rebels from the 2011 uprising.

The interim leader of Libya's army warned of the danger of a "bloodbath" as the unrest in Benghazi flared again a week after violence killed more than 30 people in the eastern city.

The United States stands behind its assessment that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons, vowing Friday there will be no repeat of the damaging mistake it made over Iraq.

And President Barack Obama will outline the proof to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin when they meet next week on the sidelines of a G8 summit.

A Gazan man was seriously injured on Friday when he set himself on fire over a property dispute with the authorities , and his brother was hurt trying to save him, a relative said.

Ibrahim al-Tarturi, 20, "set himself on fire to protest against the seizure of his house by members of Hamas," the Islamist group that rules Gaza, the source said.