Egypt on Wednesday urged Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in Gaza to halt their escalating conflict but played down hopes of a Cairo-mediated truce.

Egypt, which has a 1979 peace treaty with Israel, played a key role in mediating ceasefires in past wars between Hamas and the Jewish state.

Israeli warplanes pounded Gaza Wednesday, killing at least 30 people in a major new confrontation with Palestinian militants, as Hamas flexed its firepower and sent thousands running for shelters across Israel.

As the death toll from Israel's two-day Operation Protective Edge reached 57, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel of committing "genocide" in Gaza.

Authorities in the United Arab Emirates have arrested Qatari "spies," an Emirati daily reported on Wednesday in a new sign of mounting tensions between Doha and its Gulf neighbors.

The report in Al-Khaleej newspaper, which cited Emirati sources, was in response to a report in Qatar's Al-Arab daily that three Qataris had been subjected to "arrest and torture" in UAE capital Abu Dhabi.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Wednesday accused Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region of harboring jihadists, further ratcheting up tensions despite calls for leaders to unite against a Sunni militant offensive.

And in scenes reminiscent of the brutal sectarian war of 2006-2007, when tens of thousands were killed, the authorities found the bodies of 53 men who had been bound and executed south of Baghdad.

Hundreds of tonnes of chemicals "likely" to have been used by Syria to make the deadly nerve gas sarin were exported by British firms in the 1980s, Foreign Secretary William Hague said Wednesday.

Hague said the chemicals, which can be used legitimately for making plastics and pharmaceuticals, were exported by unnamed British companies to Syria between 1983 and 1986.

Syrian President Bashar Assad decreed an amnesty last month but for tens of thousands of prisoners, among them high-profile dissidents, the promise of freedom is a fraud.

Yara Bader, 29, has been desperately waiting for word on her husband Mazen Darwish, a journalist and activist detained since February 2012.

Yemeni authorities on Wednesday accused Shiite rebels of "atrocities" in the northern city of Amran, which they seized in a major advance towards the capital.

In the thick of a bumpy political transition, Yemen is also grappling with an Al-Qaida threat as well as a separatist movement in the south.

Tehran could cast aside bitter differences with Washington to "cooperate" on Iraq as the crisis-hit country battles a fierce militant offensive, former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani said in an interview published Wednesday.

The comments to Japanese daily The Asahi came as Iran sends members of its Revolutionary Guard to Iraq, with the security situation deteriorating as the Shiite-led Iraqi authorities battle Sunni militants.

Iran's foreign ministry on Wednesday condemned Israeli air raids in the Gaza Strip, calling on the West to urge the Jewish state to prevent a "human catastrophe".

The remarks by Iran, traditional ally of Palestinian militant group Hamas, came after Israeli warplanes pounded targets in Gaza as part of a major campaign to halt rocket fire from the enclave.

Bahraini police on Wednesday questioned the head of the largest Shiite opposition who was summoned after a meeting with a U.S. official later declared unwelcome in the Sunni-ruled kingdom.

Cleric Ali Salman, the head of Al-Wefaq association, was summoned Tuesday along with his political assistant, ex-MP Khalil Marzooq, by Bahrain's Public Security, which did not specify the reasons.