About 120 prisoners escaped from a jail in Tripoli on Monday, National Guard chief Khaled al-Sharif told Agence France Presse, adding that Libyan security services were on high alert to catch them.

"About 120 common criminals escaped from al-Jadaida prison today. Security services are on high alert to catch them," Sharif said. "We are trying to hunt them down and some have already been arrested."

A Yemeni intelligence officer died of his wounds on Monday from an attack in the southeast of the country blamed on al-Qaida, a hospital source said.

"Lieutenant Colonel Salah Badhriss has died of his injuries," the source at Seyun hospital in Hadramawt province said, adding that he had been shot three times in the chest.

The new U.S. envoy to Tripoli vowed on Monday to follow the line of murdered ambassador Chris Stevens and support Libya as the two states work to bring the militants behind the September 11 attack to justice.

Veteran diplomat and Arabic speaker Laurence Pope, the new charge d'affaires at the embassy, had his first meeting with Libya's acting foreign minister Mohammed Abdel Aziz.

The Syrian army on Monday denied using cluster munitions and said it did not possess the weapon in its arsenal, in a statement published by state news agency SANA.

"Some news outlets that are complicit in the bloodletting in Syria have been publishing false reports that the Syrian army has been using cluster bombs against armed terrorists," it said, adding the military "does not have this kind of weapon."

Egypt is launching a civilian investigation of the country's former military rulers for their alleged role in the killing of protesters during their 18 months in power, a court official and the state news agency reported Monday.

International and local rights groups have pressed Egypt's newly elected president and other authorities to probe the council of military officers who ruled the country from the February 2011 overthrow of Hosni Mubarak to this summer. At least 120 protesters died in clashes with security forces and soldiers during this time.

U.N.-Arab League peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi denied having asked for peacekeeping forces in Syria, after talks with Iraqi officials in Baghdad on Monday.

"You've read that I have asked for peacekeeping," Brahimi told reporters at a joint news conference with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari. "I haven't."

Israeli defense officials have pledged to lift a ban on Palestinian travel between the Jordan Valley and the rest of the West Bank, an Israeli rights group said on Monday.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) said that in response to its requests, the military had decided to ease rules under which only registered Palestinian residents of the valley, which runs along the West Bank's eastern flank, can pass through military checkpoints at the entrance to the sector.

A senior official on Monday said Iran proposed to peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi a "transitional period" for Syria ahead of elections to be held under President Bashar Assad's supervision.

"We proposed a halt to the violence and a truce, stopping supplying weapons and backing for armed terrorist groups and a national dialogue between the opposition and government," Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdolahian told Arabic-language al-Alam television.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called on Monday for quick progress in resolving the conflict in Syria during talks with UN-Arab League peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, a statement from his office said.

Maliki reiterated calls for a "political solution" to the 19-month uprising, during the Baghdad meeting with veteran troubleshooter Brahimi.

U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi is considering proposing the deployment of peacekeepers to Syria if a deal on a transition is reached, a member of the opposition Syrian National Council said on Monday.

One of Brahimi's ideas "is considering the deployment of peacekeeping forces which would accompany any political proposal," the head of the SNC's media office Ahmed Ramadan told Agence France Presse in Doha as the exiled opposition group began a meeting in the Qatari capital.