Massoud Barzani, the president of Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan, said he opposes the sale of F-16 warplanes to Iraq while Nouri al-Maliki is premier, as he fears they would be used against the region.

The United States has agreed to sell 36 F-16 jets to Baghdad in a multi-billion-dollar deal aimed at increasing the capabilities of Iraq's fledgling air force, a weak point in its national defenses.

At least sixteen suspected al-Qaida operatives have been killed in Yemen in ongoing battles between the army and militants for control of the country's mostly lawless southern and eastern regions, the ministry of defence said Monday.

Citing a local official from the embattled southern Abyan province, a militant stronghold, a ministry statement said the army fired a series of artillery shells on suspected al-Qaida positions near the city of Loder late on Sunday, killing 13 militants.

United Nations ceasefire monitors were touring towns near the Syrian capital on Monday, an official said, as the European Union slapped new sanctions on the regime of Bashar Assad.

Neeraj Singh, spokesman for an eight-member advance team of U.N. observers deployed in Syria, said monitors would be visiting areas near Damascus in hopes of making sure a tenuous ceasefire that went into effect April 12 sticks.

The European Union agreed Monday to slap new sanctions on the Syrian regime, banning luxury goods exports and further restricting the sale of items used to repress dissidents, a diplomat said.

"These sanctions will be put in place against Syria," the diplomat told AFP after EU ambassadors endorsed the measures ahead of a meeting of foreign ministers in Luxembourg.

Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired a rocket which hit southern Israel on Sunday, without causing casualties, Israeli police said.

"There was one rocket that was fired into the southern region, it landed in an open area causing no damage and no injuries," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told Agence France Presse.

U.N. agencies in the occupied West Bank said on Sunday that Israel last week destroyed 21 homes of Palestinian Bedouin refugees, making 54 people including 35 children homeless.

A joint statement from the refugee agency UNRWA and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs condemned the April 18 demolition of the structures at Khalayleh north of Jerusalem, along with the removal the same day of refugees from two houses in annexed east Jerusalem.

Syrian forces killed 19 civilians on Sunday across the country, including six in Homs despite the presence of U.N. observers in the rebel province to pave the way for a 300-strong mission approved by the Security Council, monitors said.

Six civilians were killed in Idlib, five in rural Damascus, six in Homs and two in Daraa, the Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring anti-regime protests on the ground, said.

The United States, its ally Jordan and 15 other countries will next month participate in military exercises to be held in the kingdom, Jordan's military said in a statement on Sunday.

U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, and his Jordanian counterpart Meshaal Zaben discussed the preparations for the land, sea and air exercises, the statement added.

Syrian woman blogger Razan Ghazzawi was among eight Syrian activists arrested in February to be charged and brought before a military court, human rights lawyer Anwar Bunni said on Sunday.

"The eight activists will face military justice for publishing and distributing forbidden tracts under Clause 148 of the military penal code," Bunni said, adding that if convicted they could be jailed for up to five years.

The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said on Sunday cash-strapped Jordan needs help to cope with hosting tens of thousands of Syrians who have fled the unrest in their country to the neighboring kingdom.

"Jordan has always been generous to refugees. Neighboring and other friendly countries should help the kingdom cope with the Syrian refugees," UNHCR representative in Jordan, Andrew Harper, told Prime Minister Awan Khasawneh at a meeting.