Israel's ambassador to Egypt, Yitzhak Levanon, returned to Cairo on Sunday after he was evacuated in September following an attack on the embassy, an airport official told Agence France Presse.

"Levanon arrived in the early hours of Sunday on a Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul," the official said.

The United Arab Emirates and France share a "strategic relationship,” the Gulf state's foreign minister said at a meeting with his French counterpart, the state news agency WAM reported on Sunday.

Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan met French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe at the annual Sir Bani Yas forum, an informal gathering on regional peace and security attended by top local and international officials.

Residents in the Syrian capital woke up to two loud explosions Sunday amid activist reports that a major building belonging to the ruling Baath party in the capital Damascus had been by hit several rocket-propelled grenades.

There was no immediate confirmation of the report, which would mark the first significant attack on a government building in relatively quiet central Damascus.

The opposition Syrian National Council announced Sunday a political program aimed at bringing down President Bashar Assad followed by a parliamentary election after a year's transition.

In a statement received by Agence France Presse, the SNC said its goal was to "build a democratic, pluralistic, and civil state by ... breaking down the existing regime, including all of its operatives and symbols."

A fire broke out at a girls' private school in the Saudi port city of Jeddah, killing two teachers and injuring 44 other people, a local civil defense official said on Sunday.

Abdel Rahman al-Ghamdi told Agence France Presse that firefighters and emergency rescue teams backed by air support managed to evacuate 700 students, 110 teachers and 32 employees from the three-storey school building after the fire broke out on Saturday afternoon.

Two people were killed and hundreds injured in Egypt this weekend as police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at protesters in a violent countdown to the first elections since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak.

"Down with Tantawi," hundreds of demonstrators cried in Cairo's iconic Tahrir Square, referring to the post-Mubarak military ruler Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, as they lobbed rocks and other objects towards armed police.

President Bashar Assad said Syria would not bow down in the face of mounting international pressure over his lethal crackdown on dissent, in an interview with The Sunday Times.

Assad told the British weekly newspaper he was "definitely" prepared to fight and die for Syria if faced with foreign intervention.

Syria's president has reached "a point of no return" and faces the same fate as former despots in Libya and Iraq, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Saturday.

"I think that he went beyond the point of no return, no way that he will he resume his authority or legitimacy," Barak told a defense summit, predicting Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime could fall within months under growing international pressure.

Yemen's embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh said on Saturday he would hand the country over to the military if he were to step down as demanded by the opposition.

"We... are ready to make sacrifices for the country. But you will always be there, even if we step down," Saleh told loyalist troops, in statements carried by the official Saba news agency.

Russia's point man on Africa said Saturday that Moscow was relieved that murdered Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi's son Seif al-Islam had been arrested and had escaped "summary justice".

"We are happy that this time the new authorities in Libya did not resort to summary justice for Seif al-Islam, the son of the ousted leader Gadhafi," the Russian presidency's special representative for Africa Mikhail Margelov said.