Iraqi authorities uncovered a mass grave with 900 corpses near the central city of Diwaniyah on Wednesday, believed to be Kurds killed during the rule of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein, an official said.

The corpses were found in the Shanafiya region, 70 kilometers west of Diwaniyah.

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood said it will take part in a mass rally planned for Friday to pressure the country's military rulers on reforms, after first announcing it was staying away.

"The Brotherhood has decided to participate in the demonstration on July 8 (aimed at) raising the flag of justice so that all rights can be regained, and all criminals punished and all the demands of the revolution met," it said in a statement on Wednesday.

Hundreds of people torched police cars and tried to storm government buildings in the Egyptian city of Suez on Wednesday, after a court confirmed the bail of police accused of murdering protesters.

Witnesses said angry people took to the streets of the canal city, burning police cars, pelting government buildings with stones and some trying to storm security headquarters.

Libyan rebels Wednesday seized the desert hamlet of Gualish Wednesday on the first day of a NATO-backed push on the capital Tripoli and captured a number of African mercenaries, Agence France Presse reported.

Buoyed by French arms drops and NATO-led air strikes, the rebels attacked positions in the Gualish area, in the plains north of their enclave in the Nafusa mountains southwest of Tripoli.

A lone French yacht was on Wednesday headed for Gaza after sneaking out of Greek waters in defiance of a ban on the departure of aid ships aiming to run Israel's blockade on the coastal strip.

The MV Dignite/Al Karama, which left Greek waters early on Tuesday, is heading slowly towards Gaza, a spokesman for the French Boat to Gaza campaign told Agence France Presse, saying they had not yet given up hope they would be joined by others from the ill-fated Freedom Flotilla which had been due to set sail last week.

Israel's prime minister said on Wednesday ties were improving with Turkey, as officials worked to patch up relations before the release of a U.N. report on last year's fatal raid on a Gaza flotilla.

Speaking in Bucharest at the start of a trip to Romania and Bulgaria, Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel and Turkey were looking to heal the breach in relations that followed the killing in May 2010 of nine Turkish activists by Israeli commandos who stormed a convoy looking to run the blockade on Gaza.

Egypt's interior ministry said Wednesday that a sonic boom from an overflying aircraft was the cause of a loud "explosion" that sent Cairo's residents in a panic.

"The sound of the explosion in the (southern neighborhood) of Maadi and in central Cairo was the sound of a plane that broke the sound barrier," deputy interior minister Murad Mohsen said in a statement.

Up to 33 police and five civilians were killed in fighting after Taliban crossed over from Pakistan and attacked a remote region in eastern Afghanistan, an official said Wednesday.

Nuristan provincial governor Jamaluddin Badr said about 40 rebels also died in the two days of clashes that followed weeks of tit-for-tat allegations of cross-border attacks that have fanned diplomatic tensions.

Baghdad and Tehran pledged on Wednesday to strengthen ties and put the past behind them, even as Washington accuses Iran of supplying new and more lethal weapons to anti-U.S. militias.

Iran and Iraq, which fought a 1980-1988 war that was one of the bloodiest conflicts of the past century, killing an estimated one million people, have drawn closer since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003.

Libyan rebel leaders for the first time will hold talks with NATO's 28-nation North Atlantic Council on July 13 to present their plans for democratic transition, the organization’s chief said Wednesday.

Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the rebel forces were making progress in their battle against Moammar Gadhafi's troops while the Libyan leader's "plans to retake country by force have fallen apart."