A car bomb exploded in a village in northern Iraq mainly populated by members of the Shabak minority on Wednesday, killing seven people, police and a morgue employee said.

The blast in Baybukh, a village north of the city of Mosul, also wounded at least 13 people.

Prosecution witnesses in the jailbreak trial of Egypt's ousted president Mohammed Morsi on Wednesday accused members of Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and Lebanon's Hizbullah of attacking Egyptian prisons during the 2011 uprising.

The trial, one of three against Morsi, is part of a government crackdown that has targeted him and his Muslim Brotherhood movement since his ouster by the army in July.

A bomb exploded near the education minister's convoy in north Iraq Wednesday and other attacks killed three people as the country struggles with daily violence ahead of elections next week.

Iraq is suffering a protracted surge in bloodshed that has killed more than 2,750 people this year, and the April 30 parliamentary vote -- the first since American troops departed -- will be a major test for security forces.

Authorities in Sunni-ruled Bahrain on Wednesday expelled the representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, in the latest manifestation of tension with the kingdom's Shiite majority.

Sheikh Hussein al-Najati was among 31 Bahrainis who had their citizenship revoked in November 2012 over accusations that they had undermined state security, more than a year after authorities crushed a Shiite uprising in March 2011.

Rival Palestinian leaders from the West Bank and Gaza Strip forged a new reconciliation agreement on Wednesday, angering Israel at a time when peace talks are at a standstill.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for choosing "Hamas, not peace", and a Netanyahu aide said he had called off a peace meeting with the Palestinians scheduled for Wednesday evening.

A top U.S. diplomat was visiting Libya on Wednesday to meet government officials, amid political upheaval in the North African country, the State Department said.

Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns was in Tripoli to meet with senior Libyan officials including interim prime minister Abdullah al-Thani and leaders of Libya's parliament, the General National Congress, the State Department said in a statement.

Qatar's dispute with three fellow Gulf states, which withdrew their envoys from Doha last month, is "over", the Qatari foreign minister said Wednesday, while insisting his country had made no concessions.

"The statement issued in Riyadh on April 17 was clear ... For the brothers in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) the dispute is over," Khaled Al-Attiyah told a press conference in Kuwait after a meeting with his Kuwaiti counterpart Sheikh Sabah Khaled Al-Sabah.

The heads of five U.N. agencies on Wednesday made an impassioned call to both sides in Syria's conflict to allow aid deliveries countrywide, end siege warfare and halt indiscriminate attacks on civilians.

"The war escalates in many areas. The humanitarian situation deteriorates day after day," the leaders of the U.N. humanitarian aid office and its children's, refugee, food and health divisions said in a joint statement.

Rival Palestinian leaders from the West Bank and Gaza Strip agreed Wednesday to form a unity government within five weeks as peace talks with Israel face collapse.

It is not the first time that the rival sides have announced a deal to end seven years of separate Palestinians administrations in the West Bank and Gaza.

The head of Syria's main opposition group has asked Saudi Arabia to increase its support for the rebel Free Syrian Army, his advisor said Wednesday.

Saudi Arabia is one of the main backers of the uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad in a civil war increasingly seen as a proxy battle between it and regional rival Iran, a close ally of the regime.