Bahraini security forces clashed with youths on Sunday after the funeral of a protester who allegedly died after inhaling tear gas fired by riot police, witnesses said.

The clashes erupted in the Shiite village of Al-Muqsha, north of the capital Manama, following the funeral of Jaafer Jassem Ridha, 41.

Egyptian Bedouin in the Sinai kidnapped two Brazilian women tourists on Sunday in the third such abduction in the peninsula this year, security officials said.

The tourists were returning from a visit to the historic monastery of St Catherine in southern Sinai when the tribesmen seized them and an Egyptian tour guide, the officials said.

The president of the International Red Cross, Jakob Kellenberger, is headed to Moscow for talks on the humanitarian situation in Syria, the ICRC said Sunday.

"Mr. Kellenberger will pay a one-day visit during which he will meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov" on Monday, the International Committee for the Red Cross said in a statement.

Iraq moved on Sunday to diversify its oil export routes to reduce the impact of a potential closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran on Baghdad's oil-dependent income, as well as the world economy.

The plans, recommended by the cabinet's energy and economics committees, include efforts to ramp up exports along a pipeline to Turkey, increase the amount of oil transported by road, and "urgently" fix disused transport pipelines, according to a statement from government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh.

A Syrian rights group said on Sunday it had filed a war crimes complaint with French authorities against former Syrian Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass who was reported this week to be in Paris.

The Syrian Association for Freedom provided AFP with a copy of the complaint it had filed with Paris prosecutors on Friday accusing Tlass of responsibility in "several war crimes including the massacre in the city of Hama in 1982."

Nouakchott has received requests from France and the International Criminal Court (ICC) to extradite Libya's ex-spy chief Abdullah Senussi, a security source said Sunday.

"For the time being two requests have been received by Mauritania. One from France arrived on Saturday and the second from the ICC on Sunday," the source told AFP.

Syria was hit by the third lethal car bombing of the weekend on Sunday as U.N. teams readied for a government-led humanitarian mission and to work to launch a monitoring operation to end a year of bloodshed.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, in a statement, said the latest blast targeted political security offices in the northern city of Aleppo, killing three civilians and wounding more than 25 others.

Syrian security forces mounted operations on Sunday in the northern province of Aleppo, northwestern Idlib, the east's Deir Ezzor region, Daraa in the south and al-Raqqa in the northeast, killing at least 37 people across the country, activists said.

Five rebels from the Free Syrian Army and three children were among the 37 casualties, the Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said.

Some 200 Syrians fled to Turkey on Saturday, bringing to nearly 16,000 the number who have crossed the border to escape an ongoing government crackdown, Turkish Anatolia news agency said Sunday.

The refugees, including women and children, crossed into Hatay province from Syria's northwest Idlib province, where government troops have launched a crackdown on rebels.

Thousands of grieving Coptic Christians packed St Mark's Cathedral in Cairo on Sunday to bid farewell to Pope Shenuda III, his body on a wooden throne, as the church considered a new head of the anxious community.

Shenuda died on Saturday aged 88 after a long illness, setting in motion the process to elect a new patriarch for the Middle East's largest Christian community.