Turkish warplanes have struck three locations in northern Iraq, believed to be Kurdish rebel hideouts, the army said in a statement Monday.

The army command said it hit "three shelters belonging to the separatist terrorist organization," referring to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels, after exploratory flights located the hideouts on June 26-30.

The International Criminal Court's president landed in Tripoli on Monday as court officials said Libya was poised to free a legal team detained after visiting slain leader Moammar Gadhafi's jailed son.

South Korea's Sang-Hyun Song arrived at Tripoli's Metiga military airport at 12:45 pm (1045 GMT), an AFP photographer said, where a high-level delegation including Justice Minister Ali Hmeida Ashur was waiting for him.

Syria's main exiled opposition groups met in Cairo Monday to try to forge a common vision for a political transition in Syria after criticizing a blueprint agreed by the major powers last week in a compromise with China and Russia.

Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi, who chaired the meeting attended by around 250 opposition figures, urged opposition groups "not to waste this opportunity" and to "unite."

The Palestinian self-rule government has detained some 200 people, including security officers, in recent weeks in the biggest crackdown on illegal weapons in the West Bank in five years, a spokesman said Monday.

Officials say the campaign is unusual because it targets include alleged vigilante gunmen linked to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement. Previously, security forces went mainly after armed supporters of rival groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

More than 16,500 people have been killed in violence since an uprising against President Bashar Assad broke out in March last year, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Monday.

Iran on Monday said it was readying ballistic missile war games simulating a counter-attack against U.S. or Israeli targets in the region in the event of air strikes on its nuclear facilities.

The three-day drill in Iran's central desert region was starting days after the European Union and the United States imposed severe new sanctions, and on the eve of another round of negotiations with world powers seeking to curb Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

The Syrian army kept up its bombardment of rebel neighborhoods of the central city of Homs on Monday, activists said, after 79 people were killed in violence across the country the previous day.

Thirty-eight civilians, six of them children, were among Sunday's dead, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The violence also claimed the lives of 13 rebel fighters and 28 government troops, the Britain-based watchdog added.

Yemeni security forces have foiled a plot to carry out 10 suicide bombings against government buildings in the capital Sanaa, the defense ministry's news website reported on Monday.

A wave of arrests targeting a suspected al-Qaida cell held responsible for a May attack that killed more than 100 soldiers in the capital netted the 10 militants charged with carrying out the bombings, the 26sep.net website quoted "informed sources" as saying.

Syria-based rebel fighters and activists said they would boycott an opposition meeting in Cairo on Monday, denouncing it as a "conspiracy" that served the policy goals of Damascus allies Moscow and Tehran.

The two-day meeting, to be attended by the main exiled opposition bloc, the Syrian National Council, and other smaller groups, is intended to forge a common vision for a political transition in Syria after 16 months of bloodshed.

A Saudi diplomat abducted by al-Qaida in Yemen's south has made a new appeal to King Abdullah to secure his release by meeting the demands of his captors, according to a video posted on jihadist forums.

"Why are you refusing to free the prisoners?" Abdullah al-Khalidi asked the Saudi monarch in the video posted Sunday and published hours later by SITE Intelligence Group.