Saboteurs bombed an Egyptian gas pipeline in the Sinai Peninsula for the fourth time since February, cutting supplies to Israel and Jordan, the official MENA news agency reported Tuesday.

The blast occurred near the town of al-Arish in the north of the Sinai Peninsula, it said, adding that the ensuing "flames were up to 10 meters high.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Syrian leader Bashar Assad had "lost legitimacy" after loyalists attacked the U.S. and French embassies for alleged meddling in internal affairs.

Angry mobs besieged the U.S. and French missions Monday after the countries' ambassadors last week traveled to the flashpoint protest city of Hama.

Tehran "reserves the right" to attack the bases of an Iranian Kurdish separatist group across the Iraq border, the official IRNA news agency quoted an army official as saying on Monday.

"We reserve the right to attack and destroy terrorist bases in border areas" near the autonomous Iraqi region of Kurdistan, the agency quoted the unnamed senior official as saying.

Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast on Monday rejected accusations by U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta that Iran had armed insurgents in neighboring Iraq.

"The United States is not in a good position in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are doing everything they can to maintain their military presence in these two countries," the state television website quoted him as saying.

Visiting Greek President Karolos Papoulias met on Monday with Israeli leaders, as long-frosty relations between the two Mediterranean nations reach new heights of cooperation.

Papoulias' three-day trip, which will also take him briefly to the Palestinian territories, comes a week after Athens effectively prevented a flotilla of pro-Palestinian activists from reaching Gaza and breaching Israel's naval blockade of strip.

The United States summoned Syria's charge d'affaires on Monday, accusing Damascus of failing to meet its international obligations after angry mobs besieged the U.S. and French embassies.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland described those storming the U.S. embassy -- for the second time in three days -- as "thugs" and said they had been "chased off" by U.S. Marines.

Protests were staged overnight in several towns in Syria against the opening on Sunday of a "national dialogue" hailed by the regime but boycotted by the opposition, rights activists said.

Some 5,000 people demonstrated in Deir Ezzor in the east of the country, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported, adding there were also protests in three districts of the capital Damascus.

France has made indirect contact with Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi's regime, the foreign ministry said Monday, denying reports that Paris has begun direct negotiations with Tripoli.

Paris is a leading member of the NATO-led international coalition bombing Gadhafi's forces and a cheerleader for the rebel National Transitional Council (NTC) battling to overthrow his rule.

Angry mobs stormed the American and French embassies in Syria on Monday, after the two Western envoys visited the city of Hama, a flashpoint for protests against President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

The foreign ministry in Paris said three French staff were wounded in the embassy attack, while a U.S. official said "no staff were injured."

Three rockets slammed into Baghdad's heavily-fortified Green Zone on Monday, wounding a woman and her children, officials said, as U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta began the second day of a visit to press Iraqi leaders on security.

The rockets wounded the woman and her three children, a security official said, but there was no report or indication the missiles had landed anywhere close to the U.S. Embassy inside the zone.