Turkey is considering launching an incursion by its ground forces against Kurdish rebel bases operating in northern Iraq after a recent spate of attacks, the interior minister said on Tuesday.

"Discussions are under way for a land operation," Interior Minister Idris Naim Sahin was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has claimed a suicide bombing in mid-August against a gathering of Shiite Huthi rebels in northern Yemen, monitoring group SITE Intelligence said on Tuesday.

Witnesses at the time said two people were killed and several wounded in the August 15 car bomb attack at a government administration complex at al-Matamma, in al-Jawf province, while leaders of the Shiite rebellion were meeting.

Pro-democracy activists called a "day of anger" across Syria on Tuesday to protest against Russia's backing for President Bashar Assad, after his security forces shot dead at least another 19 people.

"Do not support the killers," activists urged Russia in a message announcing Tuesday's action posted on The Syrian Revolution 2011, a Facebook page that has been the engine for the six-month-old revolt against Assad's regime.

The chief of Libya's revolutionary movement told thousands of cheering Libyans in Tripoli Monday to strive for a civil, democratic state, while loyalists of the hunted dictator Moammar Gadhafi killed at least 15 opposition fighters in an attack on a key oil town in Libya's east.

From hiding, Gadhafi urged his remaining followers to keep up the fight, a sign that Libya's six-month civil is not over even though revolutionary forces now control most of the country and have begun setting up a new government in the capital.

Gunmen killed 22 Shiite Muslim pilgrims on their way to Syria as they were passing through a predominantly Sunni Iraqi province from the shrine city of Karbala, officials said on Tuesday.

The group had all been passengers on a bus passing through Anbar province, long a stronghold of Sunni insurgents and al-Qaida's front group in Iraq, when their vehicle was stopped by gunmen at 9:30 pm (1830 GMT) on Monday.

Amnesty International Tuesday accused the forces that overthrew Moammar Gadhafi of war crimes, saying Libya's National Transitional Council must act to stop reprisal attacks and arbitrary arrests.

A report by the human rights watchdog consists mainly of damning examples of violations by Gadhafi's regime but also outlines serious abuses committed by the new regime forces in a brutal settling of scores.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague will accuse Iran of "breathtaking hypocrisy" for supporting revolutions in the Arab world while crushing domestic dissent in a speech Tuesday, The Times said.

Hague would condemn Tehran for "suppressing protest at home while claiming to support revolutions elsewhere in the region -- except Syria" in a speech to a seminar organized by the newspaper.

Security forces in Syria shot dead at least 17 people around the central city of Hama on Monday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, as activists called for a day of protest against Russia for backing the regime.

"The toll of victims from the operation mounted by security forces and the army in the Hama area has risen to 17 dead," the Britain-based group told Agence France Presse. More than 60 people were arrested, it said.

The United States must back a Palestinian bid for U.N. recognition of statehood or risk becoming "toxic" in the Arab world and forcing a split with ally Saudi Arabia, a top Saudi diplomat warned Monday.

If Washington imposes its veto when the Palestinians seek to become the 194th member state of the United Nations then "Saudi Arabia would no longer be able to cooperate with America in the same way it historically has," former Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Turki al-Faisal wrote.

Libya's elusive former leader Moammar Gadhafi said he has no choice but to fight "until victory," in a message broadcast on Monday by Syria-based Arrai Oruba television.

In a statement read out by former Iraqi Sunni MP Mishan al-Juburi, who runs the television network, Gadhafi said "it is not possible to give Libya to the colonists again."