Emir of OPEC member Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmed al-Sabah, left for New York on Monday to undergo "routine" medical tests, the official KUNA news agency reported.

The agency provided no details on the nature of the tests nor the duration of the stay of the emir, who turns 85 in June.

Two homemade bombs exploded overnight in a Shiite village west of Manama as Bahraini police clashed with rioters, police said Monday while the opposition accused authorities of attacking mourners.

Shiite villages frequently witness clashes between security forces and protesters demanding Bahrain's ruling Sunni Khalifa family to surrender its grip on all key cabinet posts in favor of an elected government.

Attacks in Iraq, including a series of shootings in the north, killed at least 17 people Sunday, officials said, as the country struggles to curb a year-long surge in violence.

The deadliest single attack was a bomb that exploded on a highway between Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul, killing three police and four detainees who had been captured during a raid.

Al-Qaida's representative in Syria was killed Sunday in a suicide bombing, the rebel Islamic Front announced on its Twitter account.

Abu Khalid al-Souri, who was appointed last year by al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri as his representative, died in the northern city of Aleppo, said the group.

The Gaza Strip's militant Hamas rulers have said they plan to let private contractors take over the running of the Palestinian territory's border crossings with Egypt and Israel.

"The government is to give the private sector the opportunity to handle the technical management of crossing points from the Gaza Strip," Hamas deputy prime minister Ziad al-Zaza told Agence France Presse on Saturday and said that a commission of seven businessmen would be dedicated to the project.

Prosecutors Sunday accused deposed president Mohammed Morsi of leaking state secrets to Iran's Revolutionary Guards as part of a plot to destabilize Egypt, at the second hearing of his trial for espionage.

The trial, one of three that are under way against Morsi, is part of a relentless government crackdown targeting him and his Muslim Brotherhood movement since his ouster by the army in July.

Syria said Sunday it is ready to cooperate with a rare U.N. Security Council resolution to allow humanitarian access, so long as it respects "state sovereignty."

The foreign ministry also said that the "root causes" of the humanitarian crisis must be treated, singling out "foreign-backed terrorism" and sanctions placed on President Bashar Assad's regime by Western and Arab countries.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Sunday expressed concern Sunday at the progress of talks between world powers and Iran, saying that Tehran still sought to acquire a nuclear arms capability.

"Iran, in fact, is getting everything and giving virtually nothing," he told the cabinet on the eve of a visit by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and said he would discuss the issue with her.

Syrian dissident writer and journalist Akram Bunni has been arrested by the security forces, his brother, a prominent rights lawyer, told AFP Sunday.

The 58-year-old Christian former political prisoner who had been forbidden from leaving the country, "was arrested at noon Saturday in the heart of Damascus by the state security services," Anwar Bunni said.

A car bomb explosion hit a hospital on Syria's border with Turkey Sunday, killing two people and wounding several more, a monitoring group said.

A teenager and a medic working with rebel groups were killed in the car park blast close to the Orient hospital near the rebel-held border town of Atmeh, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.