An estimated 400,000 Israelis poured into streets across the Jewish state on Saturday to protest the high cost of living, after organizers called for a "million-man march" to revitalize their movement.

The estimated figures were record-breaking, exceeding even the 300,000 people who took part in similar demonstration on August 6, and lending new life to the six-week old movement calling for sweeping economic reforms.

The separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has battled Turkey for years, said on Saturday it will aid another north Iraq-based Kurdish rebel group in fighting against Iranian forces.

Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards said earlier they had resumed operations against Kurdish rebels in northwestern Iran along the Iraqi border, inflicting "heavy blows."

Top diplomats piled pressure on Turkey and Israel to make up Saturday after Ankara's decision to expel the Jewish state's ambassador in retaliation for last year's deadly Gaza flotilla raid.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon, senior European foreign ministers and officials in Washington all urged the one-time allies to end their increasingly poisonous dispute that they worried could impact on the wider Middle East.

Libya's National Transitional Council on Saturday announced the creation of a supreme security council tasked with protecting the capital Tripoli.

"This committee represents all those who are concerned for the security of our new capital," Ali Tarhuni, who chairs the newly formed body as well as the NTC's executive committee, told reporters.

Egypt's military has started to close smuggling tunnels to Gaza, witnesses said on Saturday, amid Israeli warnings of plans by Gazan militants to attack the Jewish state through Egyptian territory.

Witnesses along the 12-kilometre border with the Islamist Hamas-controlled Palestinian enclave said soldiers had begun using earth-moving equipment to seal tunnel openings with rocks and sand.

Libyan fighters have given forces in Bani Walid until 08:00 GMT Sunday to surrender, a commander said, adding Moammar Gadhafi's son Saadi was still there but another, Seif al-Islam, had fled.

"The revolutionaries have given an ultimatum to the tribal chiefs in Bani Walid," Abdulrazzak Naduri, deputy chief of the military council in Tarhuna, told AFP.

Italy will maintain its pre-eminent position in Libya's energy production sector, Foreign Minister Franco Frattini pledged on Saturday.

"Italy will maintain its first place. We have done so and we will continue to do so," Frattini stressed when quizzed on the ability of Libya's former colonial power to hang on to its position in the face of fresh interest from elsewhere, notably France, following the fall of Moammar Gadhafi.

The Red Cross chief arrived in Syria on Saturday for talks with President Bashar Assad on access to prisoners and areas worst hit by a deadly crackdown on anti-government protests, his organization said.

Jakob Kellenberger, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, flew in for a two-day visit and will also meet Prime Minister Adel Safar and Foreign Minister Walid Muallem, ICRC delegation chief in Damascus Marianne Gasser told Agence France Presse.

A special envoy for U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon arrived in Tripoli on Saturday, as the international body stepped up efforts to put Libya on a path towards democracy.

Ian Martin landed at a military airport in the capital, as Ban said the world body was ready to assist in re-establishing security after the nearly seven-month uprising that ousted Moammar Gadhafi.

The death toll from Syrian security force action against anti-government protests on Friday has risen to 21, activists said as a European Union oil embargo went into effect on Saturday.

"The number of civilians killed over the past 24 hours has reached 21 -- nine in the Damascus area, nine in the (central) province of Homs and three in Deir Ezzor" in the east, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.