The United States on Monday called on all Syria's neighbors to keep a careful watch over their airspace, after Turkey said it had intercepted a Syrian plane from Russia carrying military equipment.

"Certainly we support the decision that Turkey has made in light of the apparent violation of their airspace by this aircraft," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said Tuesday that Germany is "ready in principle" to host Syrians who have fled the civil war there, but added that it must be done under an international framework.

"Germany is ready in principle to welcome Syrian refugees," he told regional newspaper Rheinische Post.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan reiterated Monday that the cargo Ankara confiscated from an intercepted Syrian plane contained weapons, shrugging off Russian claims that the plane carried legal radar equipment.

"It is beyond any doubt that the cargo is war equipment," Erdogan told reporters in Ankara.

A Ukrainian journalist who worked for a Russian television crew and reportedly expressed support for Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime has been kidnapped by rebels, the Ukrainian authorities said on Monday.

"A journalist, a Ukrainian national who worked for Russian television channels, has gone missing in Syria," President Viktor Yanukovych said in a statement.

More than two million voters have registered for Jordan's parliamentary elections due to take place by the end of 2012, the independent electoral commission announced on Monday.

"2.27 million voters registered... or 70 percent of the electorate, by the close of registration," commission spokesman Hussein Abu Hani told Agence France Presse.

About 120 prisoners escaped from a jail in Tripoli on Monday, National Guard chief Khaled al-Sharif told Agence France Presse, adding that Libyan security services were on high alert to catch them.

"About 120 common criminals escaped from al-Jadaida prison today. Security services are on high alert to catch them," Sharif said. "We are trying to hunt them down and some have already been arrested."

A Yemeni intelligence officer died of his wounds on Monday from an attack in the southeast of the country blamed on al-Qaida, a hospital source said.

"Lieutenant Colonel Salah Badhriss has died of his injuries," the source at Seyun hospital in Hadramawt province said, adding that he had been shot three times in the chest.

The new U.S. envoy to Tripoli vowed on Monday to follow the line of murdered ambassador Chris Stevens and support Libya as the two states work to bring the militants behind the September 11 attack to justice.

Veteran diplomat and Arabic speaker Laurence Pope, the new charge d'affaires at the embassy, had his first meeting with Libya's acting foreign minister Mohammed Abdel Aziz.

The Syrian army on Monday denied using cluster munitions and said it did not possess the weapon in its arsenal, in a statement published by state news agency SANA.

"Some news outlets that are complicit in the bloodletting in Syria have been publishing false reports that the Syrian army has been using cluster bombs against armed terrorists," it said, adding the military "does not have this kind of weapon."

Egypt is launching a civilian investigation of the country's former military rulers for their alleged role in the killing of protesters during their 18 months in power, a court official and the state news agency reported Monday.

International and local rights groups have pressed Egypt's newly elected president and other authorities to probe the council of military officers who ruled the country from the February 2011 overthrow of Hosni Mubarak to this summer. At least 120 protesters died in clashes with security forces and soldiers during this time.