Armed tribesmen have kidnapped two Egyptian technicians working at a cement factory in southern Yemen, a local official said on Tuesday.

"The two men were intercepted as they left the cement plant in Abyan on Monday night and were taken off to a mountainous region," the official told Agence France Presse, asking not to be named.

At least a dozen people have been injured in violence between two rival communities in the Algerian oasis town of Ghardaia, a human rights activist and national media said on Tuesday.

Algeria's national news agency APS said a dozen people were lightly injured in the clashes, including several policemen.

Russia and the United States agreed at top-level talks on Tuesday to push both the Syrian regime and rebels to find a political solution to their conflict and to hold an international peace conference, the Russian foreign minister said.

"We agreed that Russia and the United States will encourage both the Syria government and opposition groups to find a political solution," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after talks with U.S. counterpart John Kerry in Moscow.

Libya's defense minister resigned on Tuesday but then changed his mind and the army chief of staff was sacked, as a political crisis deepened over gunmen besieging government ministries.

"I find myself compelled, despite opposition from my colleagues in recent days, to present (my resignation) voluntarily and without hesitation," Mohammed al-Barghathi said, quoted by the official Lana news agency.

An armed group on Tuesday abducted four U.N. peacekeepers from the Philippines in the Golan Heights, which has been hit by mounting spillover from the Syrian civil war, the United Nations said.

The four were patrolling near the Al Jamlah locality in the ceasefire zone between Israel and Syria where 21 Filipino peacekeepers were seized by Syrian rebels in March, said a U.N. peacekeeping spokeswoman, Josephine Guerrero.

Saudi authorities beheaded by the sword on Tuesday a national convicted of murdering a woman after he tried to rape her, the interior ministry said.

Hussam al-Sharari was found guilty of slitting the throat of the woman who resisted his attempts to rape her after he sneaked into her house, it said in a statement carried by SPA state news agency.

Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi held talks with Syrian President Bashar Assad on Tuesday and said it was time to dissuade Israel from carrying out attacks such as its air strikes on Syria over the past week.

"The time has come to dissuade the Israeli occupier from carrying out such aggression against the peoples of the region," he said, quoted by Syrian television after his arrival in Damascus on a previously unannounced visit.

Iran and Jordan called Tuesday for dialogue between the Syrian regime and "peaceful" opposition groups to end the civil war, with Tehran warning that the repercussions of the conflict will impact the region.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, however, said that such talks must not involve the jihadist al-Nusra Front which has carried out some spectacular attacks against the Syrian regime.

Two jihadist groups the Tunisian army is pursuing on the border with Algeria belong to al-Qaida, interior ministry spokesman Mohamed Ali Aroui said on Tuesday.

"There are two groups, one in the Kef region with around 15 people and the other in Mount Chaambi with around 20 people," Aroui told a news conference, referring to the Islamist groups the army has been hunting since last week.

Shootings and bombings in Iraq, including one targeting a provincial council member, killed seven people and wounded two others on Tuesday, security and medical officials said.

A magnetic "sticky bomb" exploded against the car of Thanaa al-Massouli, a provincial councilor in the northern city of Mosul, killing her driver but leaving her unharmed, the officials said.