Iraq's premier has warned Kurdish regional security forces not to advance towards government troop positions, a military spokesman said on Monday, after deadly clashes in a flashpoint northern town.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's office warned the Kurdish forces, known as peshmerga, "not to change their positions or approach the (federal) armed forces," Iraqi military spokesman Colonel Dhia al-Wakil said in a message received by Agence France Presse.

Morocco announced on Sunday it will set up a field hospital in the Gaza Strip to help Palestinians injured in Israeli air strikes, which the king described as "military aggression" in a statement.

Mohammed VI "ordered the immediate setting up of a Moroccan field hospital in the Gaza Strip," which will include medical staff from "the armed forces as well as Moroccan civilian doctors and paramedics," the statement from the royal palace said.

China on Monday called for "maximum restraint" by all parties, especially Israel, in the Gaza Strip conflict as the death toll from air strikes on the territory rose to 87.

The statement came as Israel pushed raids against Palestinian Hamas militants into a sixth day and geared up to expand operations with a ground offensive even as international efforts to broker a ceasefire gathered pace.

The main Islamist rebel groups in Aleppo province, including Al-Nusra Front, have rejected the newly-formed Syrian opposition bloc saying they want an Islamic state, in an Internet video posted on Monday.

"We, the fighting squads of Aleppo city and province, unanimously reject the conspiratorial project called the National Coalition and announce our consensus to establish an Islamic state" in Syria, a spokesman announced in the video.

U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon arrived in Yemen on Monday to mark the first anniversary of a transition deal that resulted in strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh handing over power, media and diplomats said.

On his first visit to the impoverished Arabian Peninsula country, the U.N. Secretary General will hold talks with President Abdrabuh Mansour Hadi and Gulf Cooperation Council head Abdul Latif al-Zayani who is also in Sanaa, according to official news agency SABA.

Israeli air strikes killed 35 Palestinians on Monday, hiking the Gaza death toll to 103 as global efforts to broker a truce to end the worst violence in four years gathered pace.

In the latest bloodshed, an Israeli missile killed a senior Islamic Jihad militant in a strike on a Gaza City tower housing Palestinian and international media, the Israeli army and militants said.

Leading Republican Senator John McCain suggested Sunday that President Barack Obama should send Bill Clinton as a special envoy to try to negotiate peace between Israel and Hamas.

"The United States should obviously be as heavily influential as they can," McCain told CBS television, referring to the bloody conflict that has raged since Wednesday between Israel and the Gaza Strip's Islamist rulers.

Senior U.S. Senator Carl Levin criticized Egypt's "weak" efforts Sunday to pressure its ally Hamas to reduce tensions in the bloody conflict between Gaza's Islamist rulers and their enemy Israel.

"It's pretty weak so far from what I can tell. The Egyptians have a real interest here in the region not exploding and the peace agreement continuing to be abided by," said Levin, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Sunday a ceasefire between Israel and Gaza militants was an urgent necessity and France was willing to help broker a truce.

"War is not an option, it is never an option," he told journalists in Tel Aviv. "There are two key words: urgency and ceasefire," he said.

Syria's regime on Sunday slammed as "hostile" a French decision to host an opposition ambassador, as its forces bombarded southern districts of the capital and clashes raged nationwide.

France on Saturday invited the National Coalition, the newly formed Syrian opposition bloc, to send an envoy to Paris, after President Francois Hollande met its leader, Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib.