Rebel mortar fire on several government-held districts of the Syrian capital wounded at least 16 people on Tuesday, state media reported.

"Mortar rounds fired by terrorists struck around Shallal Square in the Mazraa neighborhood, wounding 10 people and damaging cars," the official SANA news agency said.

Israel's Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, newly reappointed after being cleared of corruption, on Tuesday urged his government to avoid spats with the U.S. over its policy on Iran's nuclear drive.

Israel and the United States have been locked in a war of words over negotiations between world powers and Iran that could see sanctions relaxed in exchange for Tehran curbing or freezing parts of the disputed atomic program.

Syria's Al-Watan newspaper, considered close to the regime, criticized the government on Tuesday for failing to better address the devastation in the country's second city of Aleppo.

The rare criticism comes as government troops make progress in Aleppo province, retaking the town of Sfeira, southeast of Aleppo city and discussing the possibility of reopening Aleppo's airport after nearly a year of closure.

Thousands of Africans, mostly Ethiopians, surrendered to Saudi authorities for a second day on Tuesday as Addis Ababa announced the death of three citizens during clashes in the Gulf kingdom.

The men, women and children could be seen lining up under the blazing sun in the poor Manfuhah neighborhood of the capital waiting to be packed into buses to carry them to deportation centers.

Iraqis angry over alleged religious insults beat up a Briton working at an energy company in the country's south and spurred another firm to suspend operations, officials said on Tuesday.

The two separate incidents come as Baghdad relies on foreign oil firms from the United States, Britain, China and elsewhere to help it ramp up crude output dramatically in the coming years in order to fund much-needed reconstruction.

A Yemeni court on Tuesday sentenced crew members of a vessel intercepted with an arms shipment allegedly from Iran to between three and 10 years in prison.

The court in the main southern city of Aden jailed three defendants for six years and four others for one year, an Agence France Presse correspondent in the special court reported.

The mainstream rebel Free Syrian Army has laid out the conditions for its participation in Geneva peace talks, including the demand that a transitional authority be given full powers.

The international community has been seeking for months to convene a Syria peace conference in Geneva, but proposed dates have come and gone with no progress towards talks.

A suspected Islamist militant was killed in clashes in southern Tunisia on Tuesday that also left two policemen wounded during a "huge" security sweep, the interior ministry said.

"Since yesterday (Monday), specialist army units have been carrying out a huge security operation in the province of Kebili," the ministry said.

Jordan's largest daily, the government-owned Al-Rai, and its sister newspaper suspended publication on Tuesday after staff held a one-day strike in protest at state "interference.”

"Al-Rai and Jordan Times did not publish today after employees at the Jordan Press Foundation, which publishes the two dailies, observed a one-day strike on Monday," Al-Rai said on its website.

Greece said Monday it would hold as unsafe a Sierra Leone-flagged cargo ship that was seized last week laden with arms and ammunition possibly bound for war-ravaged Syria.

"The ship does not meet safety standards and for this reason it will be held," Merchant Marine Minister Miltiades Varvitsiotis said, in statements reported by the state-run Athens News Agency (ANA).