Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a senior visiting Syrian minister on Tuesday that the regime's current efforts to end 17 months of violence were insufficient and required further effort.

"From what we see in Syria, it seems that this is not enough," the RIA Novosti news agency quoted Lavrov as telling Syria's Deputy Prime Minister Qadri Jamil at the start of their talks.

The authorities in Egypt are urging tribal leaders to support a security campaign in the Sinai Peninsula where an attack on August 5 killed 16 border guards, media reports said on Tuesday.

The defense minister, General Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, asked tribal leaders who gathered on Monday in el-Arish in the north of the peninsula to "support the security forces and the campaign" in the area, government daily al-Ahram said.

Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu has sent an aide to meet Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual leader of ultra-orthodox party Shas, to win his backing for an attack on Iran, Israeli media said on Tuesday.

Yaakov Amidror, head of the National Security Council, visited Yosef, whose party is a member of Netanyahu's ruling coalition, at his home in Jerusalem on Friday to discuss the issue, Israeli media reports said.

Syrian forces pounded the northern battleground of Aleppo and two neighboring towns on Tuesday as violence claimed the lives of around 15 people including women and children, activists said.

Troops also stormed a town near Damascus, torching homes and shops, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, while another activist group reported shelling and attacks from the air by regime forces in and around the capital.

Suspected al-Qaida militants early Tuesday blew up a pipeline pumping liquefied gas to Yemen's southern Balhaf export terminal, causing a complete halt in operations, security officials said.

The gunmen blew up the gas pipeline "at Station 5, in the village of Zahira, in the Shabwa province," said provincial security chief brigadier-general Ahmed Omeir.

A Japanese reporter was killed after coming under fire from up to 15 apparently pro-government troops in the conflict-wracked Syrian city of Aleppo, her colleague said Tuesday.

Veteran war reporter Mika Yamamoto died after being shot in the neck as she covered the anti-regime movement in the city, her long-time collaborator Kazutaka Sato told Japanese broadcasters.

U.S. President Barack Obama said on Monday that if Syria were to move or use its chemical weapons it would be a "red line" that would change his perspective on how to respond to the conflict.

Obama said he had not ordered U.S. military intervention "at this point," but warned that the United States was "monitoring the situation very carefully, and we have put together a range of contingency plans.

French President Francois Hollande insisted Monday that there can be no political solution for Syria unless President Bashar Assad steps down from power.

There "cannot be a political solution without the departure of Bashar Assad," Hollande told the new U.N. peace envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, in a meeting, according to a statement issued by the Elysee.

Libyan authorities arrested the key suspect behind two deadly car blasts and three of his accomplices, the interior ministry said on Monday, identifying them as Gadhafi loyalists.

"The key suspect was arrested and admitted that he was directly responsible (for Sunday's attacks in Tripoli) along with four other people," Deputy Interior Minister Omar al-Kadhrawi told a news conference.

The end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan gave way to an involuntary fast on Sunday in the war-torn Syrian city of Aleppo, with food and the money to buy it in increasingly short supply.

On the first day of Eid al-Fitr, the feast marking the end of Ramadan and one of the holiest days in the Islamic calendar, Aleppo's Shaar roundabout is usually packed with people shopping and visiting relatives.