Saudi Arabia beheaded two nationals in the southwestern city of Jizan on Tuesday after they were convicted of armed robbery, the interior ministry announced.

"Mohammed bin Ahmed Kharmi and Musa bin Mohsen Kharmi lured a man and opened fire on him," said the ministry in a statement published by SPA state news agency, adding the victim, whose identity was not disclosed, was wounded.

Bombardments by troops saw fighting ground to a standstill on Tuesday in Syria's second city Aleppo, a watchdog said, amid reports a civilian refuge was targeted in the same province.

Water supplies were largely restored in the northern city three days after a main pipeline was ruptured during clashes between government forces and rebel fighters, witnesses and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Turkey on Tuesday said it won't extradite Iraq's fugitive vice president Tareq al-Hashemi, who has been convicted of murder and sentenced to death in absentia by an Iraqi court.

"We will host Hashemi in our country as long as he wants to remain in Turkey. We will not hand him over," Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a news conference in Ankara.

President Barack Obama nominated a career diplomat as the new U.S. ambassador to Iraq on Monday, after the previous candidate withdrew amid allegations of sexual impropriety.

The White House said it was nominating Robert Stephen Beecroft, who has served at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad since July 2011, first as the deputy chief of mission and since June as the charge d'affaires.

Israel has agreed to compensate a family from southern Gaza whose two sons were shot dead by Israeli troops during the 22-day war over New Year 2009, a rights group said on Monday.

According to a statement from the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), Israel has agreed to pay compensation of 430,000 shekels ($108,315, 84,760 euros) to the Shurrab family from Khan Yunis over a deadly incident which occurred shortly before the end of the massive Israeli operation.

Syrian rebels have summarily executed at least 20 soldiers in the embattled northern city of Aleppo, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Monday.

Captured at a military compound during a rebel attack in the eastern district of Hanano, the soldiers had their eyes blindfolded and hands tied behind their backs before they were lined up and shot, sometime over the weekend, Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said.

Turkish air strikes killed 25 Kurdish rebels inside northern Iraq in the past few days as heavy army-rebel fighting inside Turkey killed at least 461 people this year, the army said Monday.

"An air operation has been staged against 14 targets of the separatist terrorist organization in the north of Iraq between September 5 and 9," the chief of staff said in an online statement.

Some 2,000 Palestinians angry at the rising cost of living flooded the streets of Hebron on Monday, as a general strike halted public transport across the West Bank.

Clouds of black smoke poured into the air across the Israeli-occupied territory as furious demonstrators set light to tires, kicking off a second week of protests against the spiraling cost of living, high petrol prices and unemployment.

The "Friends of Syria" group is to meet in the Netherlands next week to broaden the scope of sanctions and sharpen specific measures against the Damascus regime, the Dutch Foreign Ministry said on Monday.

The September 20 meeting comes after the European Union agreed Saturday on the need to beef up sanctions against President Bashar Assad inner circle as the world struggles to resolve the bloody 18-month conflict.

Tripoli's criminal court on Monday adjourned the trial of two former senior Libyan officials accused of abusing funds set aside to compensate families of Lockerbie bombing victims, an AFP reporter said.

The trial of slain dictator Moammar Gadhafi's foreign minister Abdellati al-Obeidi and his head of parliament Belgassem al-Zwai will now take place on October 15.