Seif al-Islam will face justice whether he is tried in The Hague or in Libya, International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said on Wednesday, insisting the decision lies with the ICC.

Libyan officials, however, remain adamant that he be tried in his country.

Egypt's grand mufti visited Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque on Wednesday, a senior Muslim official said, despite claims by an internationally prominent cleric that such visits are a sop to Israel.

Azzam al-Khatib said Ali Gomaa, Egypt's highest religious authority, "came for a religious visit to Al-Aqsa mosque" along with Jordan's Prince Ghazi bin Mohammed, King Abdullah II's cousin and advisor on religious issues.

A ceasefire to end 13 months of bloodshed in Syria was violated again on Wednesday with 39 people reported dead, despite the government’s latest bid to reassure the United Nations over its willingness to implement the peace plan.

Regime forces killed 20 people in Homs, three in Idlib, four in Daraa, two in Aleppo, two in Hama and one in rural Damascus, the Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will visit Iran on Sunday to discuss bilateral issues including energy and water, his spokesman Ali Mussawi told Agence France Presse.

"Maliki will visit Tehran on Sunday, heading a delegation of ministers to discuss key issues like electricity, energy and water," Mussawi said.

An air strike on an al-Qaida position near the southern Yemeni town of Loder killed six militants on Wednesday, the defense ministry said.

"Six al-Qaida terrorists were killed today" in an air raid that targeted one of their positions southeast of Loder, which is the target of an al-Qaida takeover bid, the ministry's news website 26sep.net reported, quoting an unnamed local source.

Hundreds of federalism backers who massed in east Libya on Tuesday insisted on the region's autonomy and challenged the framework for electing a constituent assembly.

Participants issued a statement stressing their "commitment to the autonomy of Cyrenaica stretching from the border with Egypt (in the east) to Sirte," the hometown of slain leader Moammar Gadhafi.

Anti-U.S. Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has called for the release of jailed Bahraini activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, who has been on hunger strike for more than two months.

"I demand his immediate release," Sadr said in a statement released by his office in Najaf and obtained by Agence France Presse on Wednesday. It was unclear when the cleric made the statement.

France said Wednesday that 14 foreign ministers would attend a meeting on Syria in Paris on Thursday to send a "strong" message to Bashar al-Assad's regime to implement a peace plan.

"The obstacles to the U.N. observers' mission that Damascus is putting in place and the Syrian regime's continued repression, contrary to its commitments, calls for a strong reaction from the international community," French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said in a statement.

Turkey has intercepted a Bermuda-flagged vessel suspected of carrying weapons and ammunition to Syria in the Mediterranean, a diplomatic source told Agence France Presse on Wednesday.

"We received information that the vessel has a cargo of arms and ammunition headed for Syria," the source said on condition of anonymity, adding that Turkish authorities would search the vessel later in the day.

Nine French activists who arrived in Israel overnight and "caused trouble" at Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv, have been expelled, an interior ministry official said on Wednesday.

"These nine pro-Palestinian activists caused trouble and some violence on board the plane they were travelling on from Athens and at the terminal," spokeswoman Sabine Haddad told Agence France Presse.