Fierce fighting engulfed Damascus on Monday, inching closer to the heart of the Syrian capital as troops shelled pockets of resistance in the south, east and west, activists said.

The unprecedented escalation was described as a "turning point" in Syria's 16-month uprising by a Local Coordination Committees (LCC) activist based in the central neighborhood of al-Midan.

A group of Palestinians gathered on Monday to cross from Gaza and visit relatives in Israeli prisons for the first time in five years.

The visits were banned in June 2007, leaving the families of hundreds of Gazans held in Israeli jails unable to see their sons, husbands and fathers.

Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon head for Russia and China on Monday to press the two U.N. Security Council doubters to back tougher action against President Bashar Assad to halt the slaughter in Syria.

The visits by the U.N.-Arab League envoy and the U.N. leader come at a crucial new stage in the 16-month old conflict. The Security Council has until Friday to renew the U.N. mission in Syria but is divided over Western calls to add sanctions.

The United Arab Emirates said on Sunday it has dismantled a group plotting against state security without identifying their affiliation or the number of arrests.

The prosecutor general, Salem Said Kabish, said an unspecified number of people were being questioned for having formed "a group aimed at damaging the security of the state," the official news agency WAM reported.

A Russian ship that tried to supply attack helicopters to Syria last month before being forced back was Sunday sighted sailing back home after unexpectedly starting a new voyage.

The privately-chartered Alaed had to return to Russia after its initial attempt to deliver the controversial cargo to President Bashar Assad's regime in June was exposed by the U.S. State Department.

A retired Palestinian security officer died on Sunday of injuries sustained after falling from a window while in Palestinian custody, security sources told Agence France Presse.

Osama Aql Mansour, 49, was pronounced dead at a Ramallah hospital, where he was transported suffering serious injuries. His brother told AFP he believed Mansur had been murdered.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called Sunday for the U.S. to speed up the transfer of weapons to Iraq, which lacks the ability to defend its airspace or borders, six months after American troops withdrew.

The Iraqi premier also pointedly said during a meeting with General James Mattis, the visiting head of U.S. Central Command, that only the central government would decide which arms purchases would be made, in an apparent swipe at Kurdish complaints over the acquisition of F-16 warplanes.

Gun and bomb attacks north of Baghdad killed three people, including a young girl, and left 10 others wounded on Sunday, security and medical officials said.

In the restive ethnically-mixed province of Diyala, a spate of shootings and explosions killed two, among them the five-year-old child.

Turkey must stop accepting "illegal" transfers of crude oil from the autonomous Kurdistan region of northern Iraq or risk damaging bilateral ties, government spokesman Ali Dabbagh warned on Sunday.

His remarks were the latest sign of cooling ties between Ankara and Baghdad, as well as between the central government and the autonomous Kurdish region over oil exports.

Petrol bombs were thrown during the night by unknown attackers at a parking lot of a Saudi Arabian court in the kingdom's unrest-hit Shiite-populated east, an official and witnesses said on Sunday.

They said the bombs were thrown in the parking lot outside the compound of the court in Qatif district, setting the plastic shades that covered the area on fire.