Explosive blasts cut power lines to Iran's underground nuclear facility at Fordo last month, the head of Iran's atomic agency said at a meeting of U.N. atomic watchdog member states Monday.

"On ... 17th August 2012, the electric power lines from the city of Qom to the Fordo complex ... were cut using explosives," Fereydoon Abbasi Davani told the 155-nation International Atomic Energy Agency gathering in a speech.

Libya's interior minister has sacked Benghazi security chiefs after last week's deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in the eastern city, according to official statements seen Monday by AFP.

Deputy Interior Minister for the eastern region, Wanis al-Sharef, and the head of national security for Benghazi, Hussein Bou Hmida, were both replaced, said two separate statements dated September 12, a day after the attack.

Around 100 U.S. citizens have been evacuated from Tunisia since an attack on the embassy in Tunis by angry Muslim protesters that left four people dead, several sources said on Monday.

"The American nationals were evacuated on Sunday," a diplomatic source told AFP, without saying how many had left the country.

Serious human rights violations have soared dramatically in Syria, a top U.N. investigator said Monday, calling for "appropriate action" against perpetrators of atrocities in the war-torn country.

"Gross violations of human rights have grown in number, in pace and in scale," Paulo Sergio Pinheiro told diplomats gathered in Geneva, as more violence shook Damascus and Syria's second city Aleppo.

Hundreds of Palestinians on Monday staged a peaceful protest in Ramallah against an anti-Islam film that has sparked violent demonstrations in the Muslim world.

Participants of the sit-in, organized by the Palestinian Authority's Waqf (religious endowment) and held outside its offices, held signs saying "We are against those who oppose you Mohammed" and "Do not touch our Prophet."

The top U.S. general on Monday discussed the Syrian crisis with officials in Ankara, as Turkey's premier criticized Washington for inaction over the conflict.

General Martin Dempsey's visit is part of an "operational planning" mechanism established between Turkey and the United States to prepare for the aftermath of Syrian President Bashar Assad's embattled regime.

Foreign ministers of the Syria "contact group" were to hold their first high-level meeting on Monday in Cairo, Egypt's Foreign Ministry said.

The top diplomats of "Egypt, Turkey and Iran will meet at the foreign ministry to discuss developments in Syria on the political and humanitarian fronts," the ministry said in a statement.

The U.N. Security Council should refer the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court, an international rights watchdog said on Monday.

"An ICC referral would give the ICC jurisdiction to investigate crimes committed by both the government and the opposition," Nadim Houry, deputy Middle East director at New York-based Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

Hundreds of Yemeni students demonstrated on Monday calling for the expulsion of the U.S. ambassador and condemning the deployment of U.S. Marines to protect his embassy, an Agence France Presse correspondent said.

"Leave slave of the devil, leave ambassador of the Americans," chanted the protesters at Sanaa University. "You coward American, the Prophet of God cannot be insulted."

An increasing number of "foreign elements" including jihadis are now operating in Syria, an independent U.N. panel confirmed Monday in its first report to say that outside "terrorists" have joined a war spiraling out of control.

The investigative panel appointed by the Human Rights Council says some of these forces are joining armed anti-government groups while others are operating on their own.