Syrian rebels made advances on Monday in the war-torn country's northwest, seizing several army checkpoints as they inched closer towards taking over two major bases, a monitor and activists said.

The advance in Idlib province came as al-Qaida's Syria branch, the al-Nusra Front, claimed responsibility for two car bomb attacks that killed 12 people a day earlier in the central city of Homs.

Syria is to expel Jordan's charge d'affaires, in a tit-for-tat move hours after Amman gave the Syrian ambassador 24 hours to leave the kingdom, state-run television said Monday.

"The Syrian foreign ministry will order the expulsion of the Jordanian charge d'affaires to Damascus, after the Jordanian foreign ministry declared the Syrian ambassador to Amman persona non grata," said Al-Ikhbariya television.

Israel on Monday approved plans for 50 new settler homes in annexed east Jerusalem as Pope Francis wrapped up a visit to the region, city officials said.

"The municipality has given the green light to build 50 new housing units in five buildings in Har Homa," city councilor Yosef Pepe Alalu told AFP.

An Algerian general on Monday warned of a "worrying" situation on the country's vulnerable borders, faced with chaos in neighboring Libya and northern Mali.

"The deteriorating security situation in the neighboring countries are all factors that require permanent vigilance and rigorous deployment," Boualem Madi told Algerian radio.

Saudi Arabia has arrested nine university professors for their alleged links to the banned Muslim Brotherhood movement, media reported on Monday.

Investigators found the professors, two Saudis and the rest from neighbouring countries, had been involved with "foreign organisations" based on "voice recordings and emails" linked to them, Okaz daily reported.

A newspaper editor and critic of Libya's jihadists was gunned down Monday in the lawless eastern city of Benghazi, an Islamist stronghold, medics said.

They said Meftah Bouzid, editor of the weekly newspaper Burniq, was shot dead in the centre of the Mediterranean city.

Al-Qaida's Syria branch on Monday claimed responsibility for two car bomb attacks a day earlier in the central city of Homs that according to the governor killed 12 people.

"God generously made it possible for the jihadists of Al-Nusra Front in Homs... to break through the strongholds of the regime's shabiha (militia)... despite the many obstacles, security barriers and checkpoints," the jihadist group said on Twitter.

Egyptians voted for a new president Monday in an election expected to give a landslide victory to the ex-army chief who ousted the country's first democratically-elected leader and crushed his Islamist movement.

The two-day election is the first since the frontrunner Abdel Fattah al-Sisi deposed Islamist president Mohammed Morsi in July, a move that unleashed the bloodiest violence in Egypt's recent history.

Pope Francis on Monday made an impromptu stop at an Israeli memorial for victims of militant attacks, on the final day of his whirlwind Middle Eastern pilgrimage.

The unscheduled gesture, which came as he visited the national cemetery on Mount Herzl, reportedly took place at the personal request of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, army radio reported.

The Philippines said Monday three Filipinos had been convicted of espionage in Qatar, with one sentenced to death and the others to life in jail.

The trio were sentenced last month by a local court for selling information deemed threatening to Qatar's national security, foreign department spokesman Charles Jose said.