Libya's deputy interior minister said Wednesday that gunmen assassinated the security chief of the eastern city of Benghazi overnight.

Omar al-Khadrawi said National Security Chief Col. Farag al-Dersi was shot dead while returning from work.

Iran bears a "heavy responsibility" in conflicts in the Middle East, especially in Gaza, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Wednesday.

Speaking specifically of Gaza, where a week of violence has claimed more than 140 lives, Fabius said: "There are long-range weapons up to 75 kilometers (45 miles) and these are Iranian weapons. Iran bears a heavy responsibility.

A military plane crashed in Sanaa on Wednesday, killing all 10 people on board as it tried to make an emergency landing when an engine failed, Yemen's Defense Ministry and an airport source said.

"An Antonov crashed following a technical problem. The pilot and nine other people were killed," a statement on the Defense Ministry's website 26sep.net said.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in Jerusalem on Tuesday during Israel's conflict in Gaza that Washington's commitment to the Jewish state's security remains "rock solid."

But the top U.S. diplomat also stressed that Washington expected a quick de-escalation to a seven-day conflict that has shaken the already volatile region and now threatens to spill over into an all-out ground war.

More than five million children in Iraq are deprived of "basic rights," the United Nations said in a statement on Tuesday, calling for urgent action.

"One in every third child in Iraq, 5.3 million children, is still currently deprived of many of their fundamental rights," it quoted Marzio Babille, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Iraq representative, as saying.

U.S. President Barack Obama called Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi for the third time in 24 hours on Tuesday and "commended" his efforts to secure a truce in Gaza, the White House said.

"He commended President Morsi's efforts to pursue a de-escalation" in the Gaza Strip, deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters traveling home from Asia with Obama during a stopover in Japan.

Two cameramen from Hamas-owned Al-Aqsa TV were among six people killed in Israeli air raids on the Gaza Strip, raising Tuesday's death toll to 20, a Hamas spokesman said.

Health officials said a total of more than 125 people had been killed and over 1,000 wounded since Israel began its relentless bombing campaign on November 14 in a bid to stamp out cross-border rocket fire by militants.

Fresh fighting between Kurdish militiamen and Syrian rebels erupted on Tuesday in the northern Syria town of Ras al-Ain, where dozens have died since the new front in Syria's complex civil war opened last week.

Elsewhere in northern Syria, several rebel battalions went on the offensive Tuesday and attacked the Sheikh Suleiman air defense battalion west of Aleppo city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The two surviving authors of a bloody 1980 coup in Turkey, both ailing and in hospital, appeared by video link for the first time before an Ankara court on Tuesday to hear the charges against them in the landmark trial.

Kenan Evren, 94, who became president after the military takeover, and Tahsin Sahinkaya, 86, the former air force commander, face charges of crimes against the state.

The new Syrian National Coalition, announced less than two weeks ago amid much fanfare in the Qatari capital Doha, suffered its first major setback on Monday as Islamist rebel groups refused to endorse it.

Already recognized as the sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people by the Gulf states, Turkey and France, the group was snubbed by Islamist groups including the two most important, the Al-Nusra Front and Liwa al-Tawhid.