The rebel Free Syrian Army, whose forces are present in Zabadani northeast of Damascus, fears a government offensive on the city after its forces withdrew several days ago, a spokesman said on Saturday.

Major Maher Nueimi told Agence France Presse by telephone from Turkey that the army had pulled back a few kilometers from the city near the Lebanese border "in what may have been a tactical retreat to prepare an attack."

Egyptian border police shot dead two African migrants and wounded a third as they tried to cross illegally into Israel early Saturday, security officials said.

Border police spotted the man and woman, whose nationality remains unknown, as they tried to climb over barbed wire along the frontier and fired on them after they refused to heed calls to stop.

Angry protesters stormed the offices of Libya's National Transitional Council in the eastern city of Benghazi on Saturday after besieging the building for hours, an NTC member told Agence France Presse.

"The demonstrators attacked the building and turned NTC offices upside down," the official said on condition of anonymity.

The Muslim Brotherhood's party has won 47.18 percent of seats in the Egyptian parliament, the electoral commission announced on Saturday as it gave the final results from marathon polls.

The Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) won 235 seats in the new People's Assembly, or 47.18 percent, committee head Abdel Moez Ibrahim said.

Qatar, which has called for Arab troop’s to deploy in crisis-hit Syria, is a "tool" being used by the United States against Damascus, state newspaper Ath-Thawra newspaper reported on Saturday.

The claim was made as Arab League foreign ministers are to meet in Cairo on review of an observer mission critics who say it has been unable to stem the violence in Syria. League officials have voiced satisfaction with the mission's progress so far.

Police killed a senior leader of Al-Qaida’s front group in Iraq in clashes while attempting to arrest him on Saturday, the interior ministry said in a statement.

Majid Hassan Ali, head of the Islamic State of Iraq's operations in the main northern city of Mosul, was killed and 19 Al-Qaida fighters, two of them Palestinian, arrested in the gunfight south of the city.

Iraqi police arrested 19 officials and tribal leaders after they threatened to harm an MP who alleged graft in Baghdad's municipal government, officials said on Saturday.

Sherwan al-Waili, a lawmaker belonging to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's bloc and a former minister of state for national security, made the claims in mid-December. They led to the arrest of Baghdad deputy mayor Naeem Abboub.

The lawyer defending Hosni Mubarak told the court on Saturday that there is not a shred of evidence linking the ousted Egyptian strongman to a controversial gas deal with Israel.

Farid al-Deeb said Egypt's spy agency negotiated the 2005 deal in line with international norms.

A roadside bomb killed 15 detainees being transported in a Syrian prison truck in Idlib province in the northwest on Saturday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

"15 prisoners were killed in the explosion which targeted a prison truck on the road between Idlib town and the village of Mastumeh," the Britain-based group's chairman, Rami Abdul Rahman, told Agence France Presse by telephone.

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, who survived a 1997 Israeli assassination bid, has confirmed he wants to step down after eight years in post, the Islamist movement said on Saturday.

"Political bureau chief Khaled Meshaal has notified Hamas's consultative council that he does not wish to be a candidate for the movement's future leadership," a statement said.