Ten rebels were killed in combat with government forces in Hasakeh, a majority-Kurdish city in northeast Syria, while fighting raged in a Damascus district on Monday, a watchdog said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the fighting in Hasakeh occurred at the al-Ghazal roundabout late on Sunday, but gave no further details.

Israel's foreign ministry said Monday it was "surprised" by Argentina's agreement with Iran to create an independent commission to investigate the 1994 attack on a Buenos Aires Jewish center.

"We were surprised by the news," foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told Agence France Presse. "We are waiting to receive full details from the Argentines on what is going on because this subject is obviously directly related to Israel."

Ten Palestinians have been killed and dozens severely injured over the past eight years when hit by "non-lethal" arms used by Israeli forces in the West Bank, an Israeli watchdog said on Monday.

Israeli rights group B'Tselem said these weapons were used by Israeli forces as crowd control munitions but they are still arms that have caused deaths.

Israeli and U.S. scientists said on Sunday that comatose ex-premier Ariel Sharon showed "significant brain activity" in an MRI scan, responding to pictures of his family seven years after a stroke left him unconscious.

Ben Gurion University, in the southern Israeli town of Beersheva, said its neuroscientists, an expert from the city's Soroka hospital and Professor Martin Monti from the University of California, Los Angeles ran two hours of pioneering tests on the former prime minister.

President Mohamed Morsi Sunday declared a state of emergency in three provinces hit by rioting which has left dozens dead, warning he was ready to take further steps to confront threats to Egypt's security.

Emergency measures would come into effect in the provinces of Port Said, Suez and Ismailia "for 30 days starting at midnight (2200 GMT Sunday)," Morsi said in an address on state television.

A Tehran court on Sunday sentenced an Iranian-American pastor to eight years in prison over his role in underground churches in the Islamic nation, a U.S. group supporting him said.

Saeed Abedini, a naturalized U.S. citizen who converted to Christianity, was convicted of threatening Iran's national security over underground church activities a decade ago, according to the American Center for Law and Justice.

A Jerusalem court on Sunday set February 17 as the opening date for former Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman's trial on corruption charges.

The case is to be heard by a panel of three judges, according to a copy of the ruling by the Jerusalem magistrates court.

A Muslim Brotherhood official and member of the local council from Misrata shot dead as he left a mosque in the Libyan city, a local source told Agence France Presse on Sunday.

"Sheikh Mohamed bin Othman was shot dead as he left a mosque after prayers" on Saturday, the source said on the condition of anonymity.

Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki has decided to postpone a visit to Gaza until the end of March so as not to impede with Palestinian reconciliation efforts, his office announced on Sunday.

It said the delay to the visit planned for February 9 was agreed at a meeting between Marzouki and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Addis Ababa on the sidelines of an African Union summit.

Angry anti-riot policemen on Sunday barred Egypt's interior minister from attending the funeral of two colleagues killed in clashes in the city of Port Said, the official news agency MENA reported.

It said dozens of policemen prevented Mohammed Ibrahim from entering the Cairo mosque where the funerals were held for the two killed in clashes with demonstrators on Saturday.