President Abdrabuh Mansour Hadi on Thursday told Tehran to stop meddling in Yemeni affairs after the defense ministry said the authorities had uncovered what it called an Iranian espionage network.

"An Iranian spy network that had been operating in Yemen for seven years under the leadership of a former leader in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards" has been dismantled, the ministry's news website 26sep.net reported late on Wednesday.

The families of three U.S. citizens killed in drone strikes in Yemen last year -- including al-Qaida preacher Anwar al-Awlaqi -- have filed a civil lawsuit against top U.S. officials.

The family members argue that the U.S. government's killing of the three men "violated fundamental rights afforded to all U.S. citizens, including the right not to be deprived of life without due process of law."

Iran said on Thursday it strongly condemns "all terrorist acts" after a suicide bombing in Bulgaria killed six people including five Israelis.

"The Islamic republic, the biggest victim of terrorism, believes terrorism endangers the lives of innocents... is inhumane and so strongly condemns" it, Arabic-language television channel al-Alam cited foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast as saying.

Egypt's former vice president Omar Suleiman, long-time spy chief to deposed president Hosni Mubarak, died on Thursday in the United States, the official MENA news agency reported.

"Former vice president General Omar Suleiman died in the early hours of Thursday in a hospital in the United States," the agency said.

Hundreds of Damascus residents fled from clashes and army shelling of several districts of the embattled Syrian capital Thursday, a rights watchdog reported, as the military gave them two days to get out.

The military said residents have 48 hours to leave areas where clashes are taking place between security forces and rebels, a security source told Agence France Presse.

Syria is not on track for peace and violence is escalating, the chief of the U.N. monitoring group said on Thursday, as clashes rocked Damascus and a day after three top regime officials died in a bombing.

"It pains me to say, but we are not on the track for peace in Syria, and the escalations we have witnessed in Damascus over the past few days is a testimony to that," Major General Robert Mood, head of the U.N. Supervision Mission in Syria, said in a statement to reporters.

Bahraini police said they had arrested another among a group of 20 people wanted over "terror attacks" in the kingdom, where authorities frequently crack down on Shiites taking part in protests.

Bahraini police had earlier announced the arrests of five other people on the list of suspects.

A car bomb on Thursday killed the police chief of Yemen's southern city of Aden when he was on his way to office, a police official said, accusing al-Qaida of carrying out the attack.

Colonel Abdullah al-Mouzai, the head of the police in Aden, "was killed when a device placed in his car exploded," the police official said, adding that the blast occurred when the police chief left home for his office.

More than 200 people, mostly civilians, were killed on Wednesday in violence across Syria, including 38 in Damascus where armed rebels are pressing an all-out offensive, a monitoring group said.

At least 214 people -- 124 civilians, 62 soldiers and 28 rebels died in one of the bloodiest days of a 16-month revolt against President Bashar Assad's regime, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Thursday, revising an earlier toll.

U.S. defense officials have held talks with their Israeli counterparts over whether Israel might strike at Syria's weapons facilities as its regime faces possible collapse, the New York Times reported.

The Times on Wednesday cited officials as saying that the Pentagon is not advocating military action because it feels that such an attack would help Syrian President Bashar Assad rally support against foreign intervention.