Syria's rebel prime minister Ghassan Hitto announced his resignation on Monday, nearly four months after his appointment and having failed to form a government.

"I announce I will not continue in my capacity as prime minister tasked with leading the interim government, though I emphasize I will continue working for the interests of the revolution and towards achieving its objectives," Hitto said in an online statement.

Sunni Islam's leading cleric, Ahmed al-Tayyeb, said on Monday he will retire into seclusion until the end of violence in Egypt, after bloody clashes that left 42 people dead.

Tayyeb, who heads the Cairo-based Al-Azhar -- Sunni Islam's highest seat of learning -- said he would "remain in seclusion in his house until all the spilling of Egyptian blood ends and those behind it take responsibility".

French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian was in Abu Dhabi on Monday for talks on military cooperation with Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahayan, state news agency WAM reported.

According to French business daily La Tribune, Paris is trying to convince the UAE to buy two surveillance satellites built by Astrium and Thales Alenia Space, in a contract worth more than 500 million euros.

Gas-rich Qatar, a key backer of the Muslim Brotherhood to which Egypt's Mohammed Morsi belongs, condemned the killing of 42 loyalists of the ousted president on Monday, and called on all Egyptians to abandon violence.

The Muslim Brotherhood, which has led demonstrations against last Wednesday's overthrow of Morsi, said its supporters were "massacred" when police and troops fired on them during dawn prayers outside an elite army headquarters in Cairo.

Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's half-brother and intelligence chief, Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan, died of cancer in a Baghdad hospital on Monday, the justice ministry said.

Hassan, who was captured in 2005, had been sentenced to death for "murder and crimes against the Iraqi people," justice ministry spokesman Wissam al-Fraiji said in a statement announcing his death.

The European Union on Monday condemned the killing of 42 supporters of Egypt's ousted president and said it was keeping its billions of euros in aid pledged to the country "under constant review".

"We are doing all that we can through talking to everyone on the ground to make sure everyone understands the need for peace to be maintained," Michael Mann, spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, said at a routine press briefing.

Syria's ruling Baath party, headed by the country's embattled President Bashar Assad, announced on Monday that its top leadership would be replaced, including Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa.

Assad, meanwhile, called on the party to "develop" and work more closely with the people in order to help end the country's 27-month war, state media said.

An Arab Israeli was sent to jail on Monday for more than two years for going to Syria where he joined rebels battling against the regime of President Bashar Assad.

Hikmat Massarwa, from Taibe village in Galilee, was given 30 months in prison by Lod District Court as part of a plea bargain in which he admitted contacts with an enemy agent, illegally leaving the country and infiltration.

Three Israeli teenagers convicted of taking part in a brutal assault on a group of Palestinian youngsters in Jerusalem last August have been given jail terms, a copy of Sunday's district court judgement showed.

Jamal Julani, 17, and three cousins, residents of Israeli-annexed Arab east Jerusalem, were attacked by dozens of Israeli youths in Zion Square, a busy bar and entertainment district of west Jerusalem.

Moderate cleric Hassan Rowhani will assume Iran's highest elected office on August 3, ending Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's controversial eight-year presidency, a deputy speaker of parliament said on Monday.

Rowhani will become president once supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the ultimate decision-maker in the Islamic republic, formally endorses his surprise June election.