A man employed at Syria's embassy in Berlin will be tried for allegedly passing on information relating to opponents of Bashar Assad's regime, Germany's federal court told the DPA news agency Sunday.

Confirming previous reports in the weekly news magazine Der Spiegel, the court said the Syrian man -- who has not been named -- was arrested in February and will be tried on 35 counts of espionage.

Government forces on Monday strafed rebel-held districts in Aleppo with helicopter gunships and pounded them with shelling on the third day of a pitched battle for Syria's commercial capital.

The fighting has sent some 200,000 civilians fleeing the northern city, according to the U.N., which warned of a looming humanitarian catastrophe, while France said it would call an urgent U.N. Security Council meeting on Syria.

France, which is taking over the U.N. Security Council's rotating presidency in August, will call an emergency ministerial meeting on Syria, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Monday.

Fabius told French radio station RTL he would chair the meeting himself and that it had to be held urgently to stop President Bashar Assad's regime carrying out further massacres in Syria.

Israeli soldiers shot dead one Palestinian and wounded two others early Monday at a checkpoint near East Jerusalem, Palestinian medical and security sources said.

The victim, 40-year-old Akram Dair from a village in the West Bank near Ramallah, was driving in a car with two other Palestinians when border guards opened fire at them, the sources said.

French freelance reporter Pierre Torres, who filed copy for several media networks including Agence France Presse, was wounded in Aleppo on Sunday as Syrian troops pushed an assault on rebels, a colleague said.

Torres, 28, was hit by a bullet in the shoulder, according to a Spanish freelance journalist who has seen his injury.

Bombings in Iraq killed six people on Sunday, including two policemen, and wounded 21 others, security and medical officials said.

A car bomb in a market in al-Muqdadiyah, 90 kilometers (55 miles) northeast of Baghdad, killed four people and wounded 13 others, a local police officer and a doctor said.

The United Nations said Sunday that 200,000 people have fled the Syrian city of Aleppo in two days as President Bashar Assad's forces step up their assault.

U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos said in a statement that an unknown number of people are trapped in the city and appealed for safe access to Aleppo for aid groups.

U.S. presidential hopeful Mitt Romney's endorsement of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is "harmful" to U.S. interests in the Middle East, a senior Palestinian official said on Sunday.

"Romney's declarations are harmful to American interests in our region, and they harm peace, security and stability," Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat told Agence France Presse.

Syria's Muslim Brotherhood denounced on Sunday President Bashar Assad, his allies Iran and Russia, and the international community for its "silence" and failure to protect civilians.

In a statement issued amid raging battles in Syria's commercial capital Aleppo, the influential Islamist movement said Assad was "legally and morally responsible for the death of every victim in Syria."

Gunmen loyal to ousted Yemeni ruler Ali Abdullah Saleh on Sunday seized a security building near the Interior Ministry in the capital for a few hours before vacating it, a security official said.

The official said the gunmen were sent by a former security official and a relative of Saleh. After taking over the building in Sanaa, they blocked off the airport highway where it is located.