Syrian security forces killed two people on Saturday as they conducted searches in the northwestern province of Idlib, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The victims, a man and a woman, were killed in the town of Khan Sheikhun, the British-based group told Agence France Presse by telephone.

Forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi fired rockets and scored casualties in a fierce counter-attack in the fugitive ex-Libyan leader's stronghold of Bani Walid Saturday, an Agence France Presse correspondent said.

Ambulances rushed dead and wounded fighters as explosions and gunfire thundered in the air, after the attack on a position of interim government fighters several kilometers from the city center.

Turkey Saturday was parachuting in 22 tons of humanitarian aid to the Libyan city of Bani Walid, one of the last holdouts of fallen leader Moammar Gadhafi's supporters, the prime minister's office said.

Two military cargo planes left Ankara on Saturday to bring food to around 10,000 people in Bani Walid in need of urgent help, the office said in a statement on its website.

A group of Russian lawmakers arrived in Damascus Saturday to meet Moscow ally President Bashar Assad and opposition figures in a bid to broker talks aimed at ending violence in the country, news agencies reported.

"Russia cares about the fate of the Syrian people. That's why we want to find a way to stop a negative scenario developing," Russia's Interfax quoted Ilyas Uumakhanov, vice president of the Russian upper house, as saying.

Several hundred Palestinian and Israeli women demonstrated on Saturday on each side of Israel's Qalandiya checkpoint, the main passage point between Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Assembling nearly a week ahead of a Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations Security Council, the women all gathered under the slogan "Women want an independent Palestine".

Iraq has recovered $116 million from bank accounts in France belonging to an official from ex-dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, the country's anti-graft watchdog said in a statement seen on Saturday.

The Commission on Integrity said the funds comprised $106 million deposited in UBAF, a French-registered bank whose shareholders include 19 Arab banks and Credit Agricole, and the equivalent of $10 million in foreign currency deposited in several banks in France.

Forces of Libya's new leadership battled diehard remnants of the fallen regime of Moammar Gadhafi on Saturday, after the U.N. eased sanctions and assigned its seat at the world body to the former rebels.

National Transitional Council forces swept further into Gadhafi's hometown of Sirte as at least 6,000 fighters battled in and around one of the ousted despot's final strongholds.

The European Union on Saturday called for a "constructive solution" on the issue of Palestinian statehood and a resumption of negotiations with Israel.

"We continue to believe that a constructive solution that can gather as much support as possible and allows for the resumption of negotiations is the best and only way to deliver the peace and two state solution the Palestinian people want," said Jaja Cocijanic, spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday warned those involved in popular Arab uprisings against trusting Western powers and their "promises," saying they should instead confide in Islam for solutions.

"Never trust America, NATO, and criminal regimes like Britain, France and Italy -- who for a long time divided your lands (among themselves) and plundered them," Khamenei said as he opened a two-day conference in Tehran on "Islamic Awakening" attended by several hundred guests from Arab countries.

Top Russian and U.S. diplomats have discussed their differing positions surrounding a Palestinian bid for recognition as a state at the United Nations, the foreign ministry said on Saturday.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday phoned her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov to discuss "certain issues of the Middle East situation," including a Palestinian bid to win U.N. statehood, the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement.