A suicide bomber attacked a Shiite shrine in Iraq Tuesday, killing 11 people, including some mourning seven who were shot dead earlier in the day, police and a doctor said.

The blast at the Abu Idris shrine in Baquba, northeast of Baghdad in the religiously and ethnically mixed province of Diyala, also wounded 19 people, the sources said.

Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces have killed some 2,900 people "with knives," the opposition National Coalition said in a new report Tuesday.

The publication, timed to coincide with International Human Rights Day, accuses Syrian government forces of carrying out "at least 20 massacres that involved the slaughter of 2,885 people" with knives and other crude weapons.

A months-long blockade by armed protesters of vital oil terminals in eastern Libya will be lifted on Sunday, allowing exports to resume, a tribal chief announced.

"We expect that the export of crude from the oil terminals will resume from December 15," Saleh al-Ateiwich, head of the powerful al-Magharba tribe which launched the blockade in July in support of its demands for regional autonomy, said Tuesday.

Thirteen Egyptian and international human rights organizations on Tuesday urged Cairo's military-installed authorities to probe the mass killing of Islamist protesters in the capital on August 14.

The joint call issued by organizations that included Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, said an investigation must be launched into the killing of "up to 1,000 people by security forces" almost four months ago when they dispersed sit-ins by supporters of deposed president Mohammed Morsi.

The U.N. said Tuesday it would for the first time begin airlifting food and other aid items across the border from Iraq to Syria after receiving the go-ahead from both governments.

"Our colleagues on the Iraqi side, with the permission of the Syrian government and also the cooperation of the Iraqi government, (are preparing for the) airlifting of supplies for winter from Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan to Qamishli and Hassaka in north and northeast Syria," Amin Awad, who heads the U.N. refugee agency's Syria response, told reporters in Geneva.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was due in Tehran Tuesday evening for talks that officials said would focus on bilateral ties, a landmark nuclear deal and plans for a Syria peace conference.

The two-day visit comes after Iran agreed in Geneva on November 24 to freeze or curb some of its controversial nuclear activities in return for limited relief from crippling international sanctions.

Israel's parliament has approved a law which allows illegal immigrants from Africa to be detained for up to a year without trial, MPs announced on Tuesday.

The government-backed bill amends earlier legislation from 2012 under which illegal immigrants could be held for three years without trial that was overturned by the Supreme Court in September.

A Dutch couple kidnapped in Yemen six months ago have been freed in the capital Sanaa, state news agency Saba said on Tuesday in a report confirmed by the Dutch ambassador.

"Dutch journalist Judith Spiegel and her partner Boudewijn Berendsen, abducted since June 8 have been freed," Saba quoted a security official as saying.

The head of the world chemical weapons watchdog said on Tuesday the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons could begin in late January.

"We hope that by the end of January, the destruction on the American ship could start," the director general of the Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Ahmet Uzumcu, told AFP.

Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel reaffirmed U.S. military ties with Qatar on Tuesday, during a regional tour aimed at shoring up Gulf alliances amid disagreements over policy on Iran and Syria.

Hagel met Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani and his minister of state for defense, Major General Hamad bin Ali al-Attiyah, in Doha, following stops in Saudi Arabia on Monday and Bahrain last week.