Hundreds of activists took to the streets of Morocco's main cities late on Saturday to protest against corruption, the high cost of living and other causes of discontent, according to AFP reporters and witnesses.

Rights groups, trade unionists and the February 20 protest movement had called the demonstrations, amid frustration at the perceived failure of the Islamist-led government to make good on its electoral promises.

Officials in Iran on Sunday called a halt to rescue operations following twin quakes that devastated scores of northwestern villages, killing 250 people and injuring hundreds, saying all survivors had been located and saved.

"There are no people left to recover from under the rubble in any village, and all necessary aid is currently being distributed," an Interior Ministry official in charge of disaster management, Hossein Ghadami, told state television.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said he wants Syrian leader Bashar Assad to stand trial at the International Criminal Court, which tries genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity,

"The best thing would be for Assad to appear," at the court based in The Hague, he told German Sunday newspaper Bild am Sonntag.

A French cargo plane carrying tons of aid supplies and medical equipment for Syrian refugees landed Saturday in Jordan for tens of thousands of Syrians who fled their country's violence.

The Antonov aircraft is carrying 80 tons of medical and support equipment and more French supplies destined for Syrian refugees will be flown to Jordan soon, the head of the operation, Colonel Yannick Rio, said.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is pushing for a U.N. presence in Syria after its observer mission there ends to support mediation efforts, diplomats said Saturday.

In a letter to Security Council members, Ban suggested several options for maintaining an "effective and flexible presence," according to a diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Bombings and a shooting against Iraqi security forces, a Shiite mosque and a local official killed six people and wounded dozens of others on Friday, security and medical officials said.

"Three policemen were killed and two others wounded by a bomb targeting their patrol in al-Muqdadiyah this morning," said a police lieutenant colonel in the town, which lies in restive Diyala province.

Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird said on Saturday he was "horrified" by the violence in Syria as he visited a desert refugee camp in neighboring Jordan.

"We are tremendously horrified to learn of this experience that so many people here face, the horrifying experiences that cause them to leave," their country, Baird said during a tour of the Zaatari refugee camp outside the northern Jordanian city of Mafraq.

French President Francois Hollande said France was committed to finding a political solution to the Syrian conflict as he paid tribute Saturday to the 88th French soldier killed in Afghanistan.

He noted that France had deployed a field hospital in Jordan "as close as possible to the border with Syria to help not only refugees but also combatants fighting the repression of a regime which is no longer motivated by anything but the fear of its own demise."

Rescue teams in northwest Iran were striving Sunday to dig survivors out of the rubble of twin strong earthquakes that leveled villages and killed at least 180 people and injured 1,300 others, according to an official toll.

The scale of the disaster was still emerging as rescue operations in the devastated zone northeast of the city of Tabriz pushed through the night after Saturday's quakes.

Turkey has been dealing with Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region as though it were an independent state, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said in a statement released on Saturday.

Turkey is "dealing with the (Kurdistan) region as an independent state, and this is rejected by us," Maliki said in a soon-to-be broadcast interview with a Turkish television channel, according to the statement on his website.