Bahrain's foreign minister on Sunday urged Iran's newly elected president to seek the withdrawal of Hizbullah fighters from Syria as a gesture to try to ease the civil war there.

The appeal by Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa, during meetings between the European Union and Gulf Arab foreign ministers, showed the widening shadow of Syria's 27-month conflict that has spilled across borders, involving Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey in varying degrees.

Iran on Sunday confirmed the arrest of several Slovaks two days after Bratislava announced that a group of paragliders had been apprehended, reportedly accused of espionage.

Tehran did not confirm how many Slovaks had been detained, but Slovak Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajcak said eight Slovaks were under arrest in Iran.

Iran's moderate president-elect Hassan Rowhani vowed on Saturday to implement a policy of "constructive interaction" with world powers to build trust and diffuse tensions, exacerbated over Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

"Moderation in foreign policy means neither surrender nor confrontation but constructive and efficacious interaction with the world," Rowhani said in his first live televised remarks since his election on June 14.

Jordan's King Abdullah II warned in an interview published on Wednesday against allowing Syria to fracture along sectarian lines, saying a Sunni-Shiite polarization "will have devastating consequences".

"A divided Syria means an open-ended conflict that would undermine the stability of the region and the future of its people for generations to come," the king, whose country is home to around 550,000 Syrian refugees, told London-based Asharq Alawsat Arabic daily.

Saudi Arabia on Tuesday pressed for global action to end Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime, telling U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry that the civil war had turned into "genocide".

Kerry met leaders of the Sunni Arab monarchy as part of a regional tour in which he has called for greater support for Syria's rebels but stressed that the United States ultimately wanted a political solution that includes all sides.

Bombs targeting protesters and pilgrims outside Baghdad killed 14 people on Tuesday, the latest in a surge of violence that has sparked fears of a revival of all-out sectarian conflict.

The latest attacks came a day after 35 people were killed nationwide, most of them in a wave of car bombings in the capital, as Iraq grapples with a prolonged political deadlock and months of protests among its Sunni Arab minority.

Security forces have arrested eight people in connection with the brutal killing of four Egyptian Shiites in a village south of Cairo, officials said on Tuesday.

"Security efforts have been increased to find the rest of the perpetrators after they fled their homes," a security official told the national MENA news agency.

Iran has denounced a decision by Western and Arab countries to send weapons to Syrian rebels fighting the regime of President Bashar Assad, the official IRNA news agency reported Sunday.

"Those who support sending weapons to Syria are responsible for the massacre of innocents and for the insecurity in the region," the agency cited Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian as saying.

Caretaker Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour denied on Saturday that the Lebanese expats in the Gulf are subjected to a mass extradition campaign, calling on the media to report accurately the news.

He pointed out that Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon Ali Awadh Asiri said that the Gulf Cooperation Council states will extradite any foreigner, whether Lebanese or from another nationality, if the person violates the immigration rules in the GCC countries.

Seventy-one members of an exiled Iranian opposition group based at a camp near Baghdad have been relocated to Albania, the U.N. said Saturday, a week after the camp suffered deadly mortar attacks.

The resettlement is the latest in protracted efforts by the U.N. to move the around 3,000 members of the former rebel People's Mujahedeen at Camp Liberty, on Baghdad's outskirts, outside of Iraq.