Egypt's top court on Sunday sentenced 14 policemen and a doctor to jail terms for torturing two prisoners to death in 2006, a judicial official said.

A colonel was jailed for three years, while 13 policemen were given one-year prison terms each in a case that also saw a doctor sentenced for a year.

Libya's coastguard on Sunday intercepted five boats carrying around 500 illegal migrants who were trying to reach Europe, an official said.

Colonel Reda Issa told AFP that most of the migrants were Africans who had set off from an unspecified location.

A Tel Aviv rally of thousands of Ethiopian Israelis against alleged police brutality and institutionalized discrimination turned violent Sunday as clashes erupted between protesters and police, an AFP correspondent said.

Mounted police used riot dispersal methods to prevent groups of demonstrators from storming the Tel Aviv municipality. 

Tunisia said Sunday security measures have already been taken to protect Jewish pilgrims at a religious festival next week on the island of Djerba, after Israel warned of "concrete threats."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday that Israel had learned of "concrete threats" of terror attacks against Jewish or Israeli targets in the North African country, prompting a quick denial from Tunis.

A barrel bomb killed at least seven civilians, including a teacher and four children, when it hit a school in Syria's northern city of Aleppo on Sunday, a monitor said.

"The primary school students were playing in the courtyard when the barrel bomb hit," said Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The U.N.'s cultural body on Sunday awarded its annual press freedom prize to Mazen Darwish, a Syrian journalist and rights activist who has been jailed by the regime for more than three years.

Darwish was arrested on February 16, 2012 along with Hani Zaitani and Hussein Ghreir, his colleagues at the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression. They are accused of "promoting terrorist acts."

The Islamic State group Sunday claimed responsibility for a car bomb attack outside a popular Baghdad restaurant that killed 15 people, including four policemen and a media figure.

Saturday's attack, one of the deadliest in the Iraqi capital this year, took place in Karrada, a district packed with shops and restaurants. It was the latest in a series of similar bombings in Baghdad.

Syria's army cut the last main supply route for a rebel bastion east of Damascus Sunday, further tightening a crippling siege on the area, a monitor and state media said. 

"The regime has cut off the last main road for rebels leading out of Eastern Ghouta," the main opposition stronghold in Damascus province, said Syrian Observatory for Human Rights chief Rami Abdel Rahman. 

The Saudi-led coalition battling rebels in Yemen denied a major ground force had landed Sunday after reports of the deployment of troops in main southern city Aden.

"I can assure you that no (coalition) forces disembarked on the ground in Aden today," coalition spokesman Brigadier General Ahmed Assiri told the Saudi al-Ekhbariya news channel.

Al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) has claimed responsibility for the murder of an American atheist blogger in Bangladesh over two months ago, according to SITE Intelligence Group.

Avijit Roy was hacked to death by two assailants with machetes on the streets of the capital Dhaka in February as he returned from a book fair with his wife.