Twenty-nine soldiers and a Shiite Muslim cleric were among 58 people killed in violence across Syria on Wednesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

At least 20 troops died in clashes in the northwestern province of Latakia, while another five were killed in fighting that erupted late Tuesday in the Kurdish Mountain region, the watchdog said.

A Russian cargo line denied on Wednesday it was involved in illegal transport of weapons and attack helicopters to Syria amid media reports Moscow was sending arms to the conflict-torn country.

Britain's Sunday Telegraph earlier reported that the MV Alaed operated by Femco, a shipping company based on Russia's Sakhalin Island, carried attack helicopters destined for Syria.

Egypt's Hosni Mubarak was Wednesday in a coma on life support at a Cairo hospital, sources said, as tension spiked over who will succeed him as president and moves by the ruling military to extend its powers.

The uncertainty over the health of the ousted leader comes amid new political upheaval, with both candidates in a presidential vote claiming victory and the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) granting itself sweeping powers.

Yemen's security forces have foiled a militant plot to attack embassies in Sanaa, state news agency SABA said on Wednesday, just days after the army forced al-Qaida out of their bastions in the country's south.

"Security forces have managed to foil a terror plot targeting foreign embassies in the capital," SABA news agency said citing a top security official.

A car bomb on Wednesday in the north Iraq city of Kirkuk exploded as a judge's car was passing, wounding him and nine others and leaving two people dead, security and medical officials said.

The bomb exploded as Judge Aziz Abdullah of the Kirkuk criminal court was driving near the Kirkuk Palace hotel in the center of the city, police Brigadier General Sarhad Qader said.

There was no let-up in rocket fire from Gaza on Wednesday, with at least 10 hitting the Jewish state despite seven Israeli air strikes overnight, police and the military said.

As the violence in and around Gaza entered its third day, Israeli police raised their level of alert in the towns and villages within rocket range, although there were no casualties in the latest strikes.

U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday said Russia and China understood the dangers of a Syrian civil war but had not yet "signed on" to a plan to prod President Bashar Assad from power.

Obama said after meeting Presidents Vladimir Putin and Hu Jintao at the G20 summit in Mexico that he hoped work could take place on a political transition plan to present to the Syrian people in the next two weeks.

The United Nations is to keep unarmed monitors in Syria despite the escalation of hostilities which led to the suspension of patrols, top U.N. officials said Tuesday.

Major General Robert Mood, head of the U.N. Supervision Mission in Syria (UNSMIS), told the U.N. Security Council the nearly 300 monitors were "morally obliged" to stay despite facing intensive attacks, diplomats said.

The United States on Tuesday added Syria to a blacklist of countries failing to abide by conventions barring human trafficking and slavery, a move which leads to sanctions and cuts in U.S. aid.

"The government of Syria does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so," the 2012 Trafficking in Persons report said.

Egypt's ousted strongman Hosni Mubarak suffered a stroke in prison on Tuesday as authorities mulled transferring him to hospital, state media reported.

Mubarak did not lose consciousness during the stroke, the official MENA news agency reported. It had previously that doctors treated the former president with a defibrillator earlier because his "heart stopped."