Opponents of Syrian President Bashar Assad voted on Sunday to elect 29 provincial council members to run rebel-held areas in the northern province of Aleppo, organizers and participants told Agence France Presse.

"For the first time, Aleppo will have a freely elected provincial council. We hope the whole of Syria will have a free election soon," candidate Yehia Naanaa from the bombed-out town of Hreitan told AFP.

Gunmen have attacked an Egyptian Coptic church in Libya's eastern city of Benghazi, assaulting two priests, the foreign ministry said Sunday, days after dozens of Egyptian Christians suspected of proselytizing were arrested.

The foreign ministry said it "strongly condemned Thursday's attack on the Egyptian church... and the aggression towards Father Paula Isaac and his deputy by the irresponsible armed men."

Four members of the security forces were hurt on Sunday during a failed bid to evacuate ex-rebels occupying Libya's national assembly demanding aid for injuries sustained during the revolution, the government said.

The authorities have been negotiating for several days with the handicapped former rebels, among them amputees, who took part in the conflict that overthrew Moammar Gadhafi's dictatorship in 2011, and who are demanding compensation.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday urged Egypt to work harder and make compromises for ending its political divisions, as he pledged $250 million in U.S. aid to revive the country's dilapidated economy.

On Sunday, Kerry wrapped up his two-day visit to Egypt with a "candid and constructive" meeting with Egypt's Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in which he called on the bitterly divided Egyptian political factions to unite.

An Iraqi soldier was killed and three people including a soldier were wounded inside north Iraq in fire exchanged between regime forces and rebels in Syria, the defense ministry spokesman in Baghdad said.

The casualties were caused by "fighting at the Yaarubiyeh border crossing inside Syria" on Saturday, Mohammed al-Askari told Agence France Presse by telephone.

Bahrain on Sunday criticized world inaction on Syria and Iranian "interference" in the internal affairs of Gulf states ahead of a visit to the Saudi capital by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

"The Syrian crisis has become more of a quasi-catastrophe through the unjustified killing of the Syrian people," Bahraini Foreign Minister Sheikh Khaled al-Khalifa said at the opening session of a Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) meeting.

Angry residents of a town in northern Tunisia hurled stones at the car of visiting Islamist leader Rached Ghannouchi on Sunday, a security source said.

At the sight of Ghannouchi, several dozen people in Thala shouted "Get out!" -- one of the rallying cries of the revolution that toppled the regime of former dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011.

Syria's opposition chief Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib made a first visit to the largely rebel-held northern province of Aleppo on Sunday, an opposition source told Agence France Presse.

"Khatib entered the country for a few hours on Sunday morning for the first time" since becoming head of the Syrian National Coalition in November, the source said on condition of anonymity.

Hundreds of Egyptian football fans briefly blocked a main road to Cairo's international airport on Sunday, forcing a delay in visiting U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's departure, an airport official said.

The al-Ahly fans blocked the road in anticipation of a court ruling this weekend in which rival supporters in Port Said face sentencing over a deadly post-match riot. The al-Ahly fans want them convicted.

Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon said on Sunday that Israel is closely monitoring the battlefronts in Syria after press reports that rebels had seized Scud missiles from regime forces.

But Yaalon downplayed any threat to Israel from the Scuds -- long-range surface-to-surface missiles which Iraq's executed dictator Saddam Hussein used against the Jewish state in the 1991 Gulf War.