Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi has suggested to U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon to announce Lebanon as a neutral country, Bkirki sources told the Kuwaiti al-Anbaa daily on Sunday.

The sources said that al-Rahi made the proposal during his visit to New York last month. He allegedly asked for U.N. assistance to achieve this objective which serves the stability of Lebanon and the region.

Iran has affirmed to the U.N. chief that one of the suspects in an assassination plot on U.S. soil belongs to an Iranian exile group that is seeking to overthrow its Islamic regime, media reports said Saturday.

A police probe into one of the suspects, following an Interpol request, suggested the individual "is a member of the Mujahedeen-e Khalq Organization," the Tehran mission in the United Nations said in a letter to U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon on Friday, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Israel has freed six of 27 passengers and crew who were aboard two ships intercepted by its navy while trying to run the Jewish state's blockade on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, an official said on Saturday.

Commandos boarded the Irish-flagged Saoirse (Freedom) and the Canadian ship Tahrir (Arabic for Liberation) in international waters off Gaza on Friday before the navy escorted them to the port of Ashdod, the military said.

Israel has freed six of 27 passengers and crew who were aboard two ships intercepted by its navy while trying to run the Jewish state's blockade on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, an official said on Saturday.

Commandos boarded the Irish-flagged Saoirse (Freedom) and the Canadian ship Tahrir (Arabic for Liberation) in international waters off Gaza on Friday before the navy escorted them to the port of Ashdod, the military said.

A member of Nigeria's Islamist Boko Haram sect on Saturday claimed responsibility for a wave of attacks that killed at least 63 people in the northeast of the country the day before.

"We are responsible for the attack in Borno (state) and Damaturu," Abul Qaqa told an Agence France Presse correspondent by phone.

A blast went off Saturday along a road in the world's largest refugee camp in eastern Kenya near the border with Somalia, but no one was injured, officials said.

The explosion appeared to be minor and one of the officials said if it turns out to be an explosive device planted by insurgents it may have been improperly wired. The two officials spoke on condition they weren't identified.

The United Nations Security Council will have to “confront” the issue of the funding of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon if the government fails to do so, reported the daily An Nahar on Saturday.

A western diplomatic source told the daily that the Security Council has not reached that point yet.

Members of the U.N. Human Rights Council said Friday they seek to "shine a spotlight" on violations in Syria and will press ahead with investigations of the regime whether or not its monitors are allowed into the country.

A U.N. human rights fact-finding mission was barred entry to the violence-plagued state in August, and a subsequent U.N.-backed commission of inquiry has also been refused access, with its members instead traveling to border areas in neighboring countries to monitor abuses from there.

Syrian troops killed at least 23 people Friday when demonstrators took to the streets denouncing "despots and tyrants," as world powers cast doubt on the regime's commitment to an Arab peace deal.

Troops raked several residential neighborhoods of Homs -- a city of some one million people that has been at the frontline of protests raging since mid-March -- with heavy machineguns mounted on tanks, a watchdog said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday that Berlin wanted the United Nations to take a firmer line on Syria's attacks on civilians after nearly eight months of deadly violence.

Merkel told reporters after talks with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that they agreed in "condemning the human rights violations occurring in Syria".