French prosecutors have opened a murder inquiry into Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's 2004 death near Paris, sources close to the matter told Agence France Presse Tuesday.

The probe comes after Arafat's family launched legal action in France last month over claims the veteran Palestinian leader died of radioactive polonium poisoning.

Seven Syrians, including two children, who tried to sail to Cyprus to escape the conflict in their homeland drowned after their boat sank earlier this month, a Turkish-Cypriot police source said Tuesday.

The source speaking in the breakaway Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), which is recognized only by Turkey, said the disaster took place on August 16 off the coast of northern Cyprus, near the Karpas peninsula.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Tuesday urged Egypt's President Mohammed Morsi to warm relations with Israel by visiting Jerusalem.

"I was happy to hear Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi speak of Egypt's commitment to peace with Israel, to the Camp David peace accords and to the battle against terror," Lieberman said at a legal conference.

The head of Russia's army said Tuesday that Moscow had no intention to end its military presence in Syria despite the escalating violence and threat of President Bashar Assad's fall.

"Why are you so worried about Syria?" Chief of Staff General Nikolai Makarov demanded in response to a question about reports that Russia was in the process of evacuating its Syrian naval base and pulling out senior military personnel.

A car bomb killed 12 people at a funeral in the mainly Druze and Christian suburb of Jaramana on the southeastern outskirts of the Syrian capital on Tuesday, state television reported.

"Another 48 people were wounded, many critically, in a terrorist car blast that targeted a funeral procession in Jaramana," it said.

Gunmen shot dead two Iraqi army soldiers, including a lieutenant, in a drive-by shooting in north Baghdad on Tuesday, security and medical officials said.

The gunmen, who were driving in two cars, opened fire using silenced pistols on a military pick-up truck in Waziriyah, killing the two, an interior ministry official and a medical source said.

The number of Syrians fleeing to the al-Zaatri refugee camp in Jordan has doubled in recent days, with more than 10,000 taking shelter there, the U.N. refugee agency said on Tuesday.

"The pace of arrivals from the Syrian border to the Zaatri camp in north Jordan has doubled in the past week," Melissa Flemming, a spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, told a press conference.

Vice President Farouq al-Shara said it would be a "mistake" to keep Iran out of international efforts to end the Syrian crisis, al-Watan newspaper reported on Tuesday.

"Some countries' refusal to engage with Iran on efforts to settle Syria's crisis on the pretext that Iran is part of the problem is a clear political mistake," it quoted Shara as saying.

A Saudi man was executed Tuesday after being convicted of murdering a compatriot, the interior ministry said.

Mohammed al-Salala Asiri was beheaded by the sword in the southwestern province of Asir after being found guilty of stabbing to death Amir al-Zayadi, the ministry said in a statement carried by SPA state news agency.

Israeli aircraft attacked three Hamas training camps in the Gaza Strip early Tuesday, causing no injuries, eyewitnesses in the enclave said.

An Israeli helicopter fired six missiles at two different sites northwest of Gaza city, both training camps for Hamas' military wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, eyewitnesses said.