Turkish military planes struck rebel targets in northern Iraq in a bid to rout separatists from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), security sources said Tuesday.

"A total of 18 targets were fired at on Monday in the northern Iraqi regions of Zap and Metina" in Iraqi Kurdistan, said a source in southeastern Turkey, on the border with Iraq.

The European Union said Tuesday it was speeding up disbursement of aid to help ensure there is no interruption in its support for the Palestinian Authority and U.N. refugee programs.

It said it was bringing forward to the first quarter of 2013 aid payments of 60 million euros ($80 million) to help the Palestinian Authority finance its budget deficit, pay civil servants and pensions, and provide essential public services.

Electricity production in Syria has been halved by a lack of fuel supplies at power plants and transport difficulties caused by deteriorating security, the official daily Tishrin said on Tuesday.

"There is a shortfall of about 3,000 megawatts due to a lack of fuel and gas supplies needed to operate the power plants. Production is only at 5,500 megawatts," down from its normal level of 8,500.

Scores of Palestinians tried to return on Tuesday to a protest outpost they set up outside Jerusalem from which they were evicted at the weekend, activists and Israeli police said.

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said a group of protesters had tried to make their way to a hilltop near Maaleh Adumim settlement where they had pitched around 20 tents last Friday before being forced to leave two days later.

Syrian Prime Minister Wael al-Halaqi arrived in Tehran on Tuesday for consultations with his beleaguered regime's key regional ally, state television reported.

Leading a high ranking delegation, Halaqi was welcomed by his counterpart Mohammad Reza Rahimi.

Egyptian police fired tear gas to disperse protesters in the main railway station in second city Alexandria on Tuesday, hours after 19 people were killed when a train carrying conscripts derailed.

A police official said hundreds of protesters clashed with passengers in the station when they tried to block trains from leaving, and police fired tear gas to disperse them.

Five Libyans tortured under Moammar Gadhafi have filed legal complaints against a French technology firm that provided his regime with surveillance equipment, a rights group said on Tuesday.

An appeals court has meanwhile given the green light to a judicial probe into accusations of complicity against Amesys, said Patrick Baudouin, a lawyer for the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH).

A top Jordanian Salafist leader said on Tuesday the "mufti" of the jihadist al-Nusra Front in Syria's southern province of Daraa has been in a killed in raid.

"Riyad Hdeib, or Abu Hamzah, was martyred in a regime raid on Daraa on Monday. Hdeib was al-Nusra's mufti in Daraa," Abed Shehadeh, known as Abu Mohammad Tahawi, told Agence France Presse.

Russia said Tuesday it would be "counterproductive" to refer war crimes committed in the Syria conflict to the International Criminal Court as proposed by dozens of states led by Switzerland.

"We view this initiative as untimely and counterproductive to solving today's main goal -- an immediate end to the bloodshed in Syria," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

French President Francois Hollande, on a visit to the Gulf, Tuesday defended his country's intervention in Mali, saying it had prevented the African country from being overrun by "terrorists".

Speaking to reporters as he arrived at Peace Camp in Abu Dhabi -- his country's only military base in the region -- Hollande said it will take at least another week before an African force is deployed in Mali.