The U.S. ambassador to Syria on Tuesday visited a town in the south of the country where 15 people were killed last week, an embassy spokesman said.

"Ambassador Robert Ford went this morning to Jassem, 65 kilometers south of Damascus as part of his routine diplomatic duties," the spokesman, who declined to be named, told Agence France Presse.

Rebel fighters captured Moammar Gadhafi's heavily fortified Bab al-Aziziya compound and headquarters in Tripoli on Tuesday after a day of fierce fighting, an Agence France Presse correspondent witnessed.

The defenders had fled, and the whereabouts of Gadhafi or his family were unknown after the insurgents breached the defenses as part of a massive assault that began in the morning.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) "never" had confirmation of the arrest of Seif al-Islam, one of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's sons said to have been captured by the rebels, a spokesman said Tuesday.

"After yesterday's announcement, we communicated with the National Transitional Council to have confirmation of the arrest, but we never received it from the NTC," the ICC's spokesman Fadi el-Abdallah said -- after Seif al-Islam spoke to journalists to refute the "lies" about his capture.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu arrived in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi on Tuesday to meet rebel governing council chief Mustafa Abdel Jalil, an Agence France Presse journalist said.

Davutoglu arrived Tuesday morning in the rebel bastion, even as Moammar Gadhafi's forces staged a fightback in Tripoli against insurgents who had surged into the capital on Sunday.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas meets on Tuesday the U.S. Assistant Secretary for Near East Affairs, Jeffrey Feltman, in Doha as Washington presses the Palestinians to abandon plans to bid from UN membership next month, an Arab diplomat said.

The meeting will take place as several Arab foreign ministers convene after a request by the Palestinian Authority "to maintain cohesion in the Arab stand," the diplomat told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.

Former Croatian president Stipe Mesic who has close ties Moammar Gadhafi said Tuesday that the Libyan leader told him he was ready to step down from political life if NATO ended airstrikes.

"I can confirm that colonel Gadhafi is ready to retreat completely from political and public life with a firm engagement that we would impede the setting up of a multi-party system but on the condition that the NATO airstrikes cease," Mesic said in a statement quoted by Hina news agency.

The U.N. Human Rights Council on Tuesday ordered a probe into violations committed by the Syrian regime during its crackdown on popular protests.

By 33 votes to four, with nine abstentions, the council passed a resolution to "urgently dispatch an independent international commission of inquiry... to investigate alleged violations of international human rights law ... in the Syrian Arab Republic."

Turkish air attacks on northern Iraq have killed between 90 and 100 Kurdish rebels and injured another 80, the army said on its website on Tuesday.

The toll was the first issued by the army since it resumed a bombing campaign against bases of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in the Iraqi mountains last Wednesday after a lull of more than a year.

Six suspected al-Qaida gunmen have been killed in the south Yemen province of Abyan in an air raid by government forces, a local official and a witness said on Tuesday.

The official said the six militants were killed on Monday as Yemeni forces raided several al-Qaida posts in the area of Arkub, which was overrun Sunday by armed men suspected of belonging to the jihadist network.

Tripoli is "under control" of the regime, a son of Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi claimed early Tuesday, after rebels said they had taken most of the capital and gunfire rattled the port city.

Seif al-Islam, wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, met with an Agence France Presse correspondent and two other journalists, after ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said rebel forces had arrested him.