An accidental blast at an army ammunition depot stocked with mines and explosives killed six soldiers in south Yemen on Monday, a local municipality official said.

The blast occurred Monday morning in an explosives warehouse at an army base in the southern port city of Aden, "killing six soldiers and wounding others," local municipality chief Abdel Munim al-Abd told Agence France Presse.

Russian deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov arrived in Tehran on Monday to discuss the crisis in mutual ally Syria with Iranian officials, Fars news agency reported.

"Mikhail Bogdanov, deputy foreign minister for Middle East and President Vladimir Putin's special representative arrived in Tehran at the invitation of his counterpart Hossein Amir Abdolahian to discuss regional issues and Syria," Fars said.

Israeli air strikes killed two Gaza fighters on Monday as they clashed with troops who crossed the border on the eve of a landmark visit by the Qatari emir, medical sources said.

The flareup provoked threats of revenge from the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the ruling Hamas movement, and a pledge from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that there would be no immunity for those firing on the Jewish state.

A Jordanian soldier was killed before dawn on Monday in a clash with militants trying to cross the border into neighboring Syria, the Information and Culture Minister Samih Maaytah told AFP.

He said that "corporal Mohammed Abdullah al-Munasir, 25 years old, was martyred during a clash with an armed group that wanted to enter Syria."

Syrian troops pounded rebels in northern Syria and Damascus province before dawn on Monday, while fierce fighting broke out in Aleppo and the capital, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

On the northeastern outskirts of Damascus, clashes erupted when troops tried to storm the rebel-controlled town of Harasta. On Sunday, at least eight civilians and eight rebels were killed in fighting and shelling there.

Ten people were killed and 15 others wounded on Sunday when a bomb exploded outside a police station in the Christian neighborhood of Bab Touma in the Syrian capital Damascus, a rights group said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights gave a toll of 10 dead and 15 wounded as a car bomb blew up outside the station in Bab Touma, where many in the minority community fear Islamists in the anti-Assad revolt.

Peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi on Sunday urged the two sides in Syria's conflict to declare "unilateral" ceasefires for this week's Eid al-Adha holiday, following talks with President Bashar Assad.

"I appeal to everyone to take a unilateral decision to cease hostilities on the occasion of Eid al-Adha and that this truce be respected from today or tomorrow," Brahimi told reporters, referring to the four-day Muslim holiday starting on Friday.

Iran's foreign ministry on Saturday rejected a guilty plea by an Iranian-American man that he conspired with Iranian officials to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington.

Manssor Arbabsiar pleaded guilty on Wednesday at the New York federal court to attempting to hire a Mexican drug gang for $1.5 million to blow up the Saudi envoy in a restaurant he frequented in Washington.

Polling stations were poised to closed in the West Bank on Saturday after 12 hours of voting in the first Palestinian election since 2006, with voters casting their ballots in a municipal poll that was boycotted by Hamas.

After nine hours of voting, the Central Elections Commission (CEC) said the turnout was 35 percent in all areas except for the southern Hebron district where more than 40 percent of registered voters had shown up by the late morning.

Clashes between Libyan pro-government forces and fighters of Bani Walid, a former bastion of slain dictator Moammar Gadhafi, killed nine people on Saturday and wounded more than 100 others, a medical official said.

"The hospital has received nine people killed and 122 wounded," from the fighting, said the medical official in the city of Misrata, northeast of Bani Walid, where pro-government forces are being treated.