Tunisia's opposition veteran Moncef Marzouki on Tuesday was sworn in as the country's first elected president since the north African nation's revolution sparked the Arab Spring.

"I will be the guarantor of the national interests, the state of laws and institutions," Marzouki said with his hand on the Koran as he took his oath before the constituent assembly that elected him president on Monday.

Army defectors on Tuesday killed seven members of Syria's security forces in retaliation for an attack that cost the lives of 11 civilians, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, as the Local Coordination Committees said Syrian forces shot dead 33 civilians across the country on Tuesday.

The LCC, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said security forces shot dead 20 people in the northwestern province of Idlib, seven in the central province of Hama, four in the central region of Homs and two in the southern province of Daraa.

An explosion ripped through a gas pipeline near the town of Rastan in Syria's flashpoint Homs province, the official news agency SANA reported Tuesday, blaming the overnight incident on "terrorists."

"An armed terrorist group in Homs bombed the gas pipeline near Rastan which caused explosions and fires in the pipeline at the point of bombing," the English-language report said, adding that "no human casualties were reported."

Palestinian police shot at a group of Israelis illegally visiting a West Bank religious site, injuring one, Palestinian security officials said Tuesday.

The police opened fire after shouting warnings at the small group of Israeli worshippers who had entered Joseph's Tomb near the northern West Bank city of Nablus overnight, said the officials.

Jewish settlers attacked an army base overnight on rumors troops were to destroy a settlement outpost, hours after another group broke into a military zone on the Jordan border, officials said.

In a statement on Tuesday, the military said a group of around 50 people had attacked the Ephraim base near Qalqilya in the northern West Bank.

Iran has indicted 15 people on charges of spying for the United States and Israel, Tehran's chief prosecutor said Tuesday, according to the Fars news agency.

"An indictment has been issued by the prosecutor's office against these 15 people," Jafari Dolatabi was quoted as saying.

Kuwait prosecutors have questioned two former MPs over money laundering charges after millions of dollars were allegedly deposited in their bank accounts, local media reported Tuesday.

Kuwait's al-Jarida newspaper, one of four local papers to report on the interrogations, said former pro-government lawmakers Mukhled al-Azemi and Hussein al-Huraiti were interrogated late Monday on the source of the funds.

More than 5,000 people are now believed to have been killed in the Syrian government's crackdown on protests, U.N. rights chief Navi Pillay told the U.N. Security Council on Monday.

More than 14,000 people are estimated to have been detained and 12,400 have fled into neighboring countries, Pillay told a closed session of the 15-nation council, according to diplomats.

U.S. President Barack Obama said Monday that "history will judge" the decision by his predecessor president George W. Bush to invade Iraq in 2003.

As an Illinois state senator, Obama had slammed the planned invasion as "a dumb war."

Tunisia's veteran opposition leader Moncef Marzouki was elected president Monday, a month and a half after the north African country held its first post-revolution election.

The fierce opponent of ousted strongman Zine el Abidine Ben Ali was elected with 153 votes in the 217-member assembly, with three of the 202 deputies present voting against, two abstaining and 44 casting blank ballots.