Jordan's opposition Islamists on Tuesday denounced an Egyptian court's decision to ban all Muslim Brotherhood activities, saying the ruling sought to "reestablish oppression and tyranny."

"Egypt's military coupists took this decision against people's will after they failed to win their confidence," Zaki Bani Rsheid, deputy leader of Jordan's Brotherhood, said on Facebook.

Unidentified gunmen shot dead on Tuesday a Yemeni air force officer in the capital, the second killing of its kind in less than 24 hours, a military official said.

Colonel Ali al-Dailamy died instantly after he came under fire from gunmen near the military hospital in Sanaa, the official said, adding that the assailants managed to flee.

A U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria could mention an article which allows force or sanctions, a top Russian diplomat said Tuesday, as Moscow and Washington seek a compromise on a text backing a deal to rid the regime of chemical weapons.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov stressed that the key Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter could be invoked only if the chemical weapons accord agreed between Russia and the United States is violated by either side in the Syrian conflict.

The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East urged on Tuesday the Syrian Red Crescent, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the governmental and non-governmental organizations NGOs to aid the ancient Syrian Christian village of Maaloula.

“Humanitarian organizations should send aid convoys to the historic Saint Takla convent and those who are trapped in it,” an appeal issued by the Patriarchate said.

The number of people who have tried to illegally cross the border that separates the Spanish territory of Melilla from Morocco has nearly doubled this year but most fail to make it over, the interior ministry said Monday.

About 3,000 migrants tried to scale the border fence that surrounds Melilla, an autonomous Spanish city that borders northern Morocco, between January 1 and September 17, compared to 1,610 during the same period last year, the ministry said in a statement.

An Omani airman has been killed in the second training accident to befall the sultanate's air force in less than a fortnight, the defense ministry announced Monday.

"Pilot Officer Abdelmalek Ben Yacoub al-Afifi was killed when the fighter he was flying crashed on Sunday evening," the ministry said, without giving further details.

A bomb targeting Sunni mourners in Baghdad killed 15 people on Monday, the third in a series of attacks on funerals that have raised the specter of all-out sectarian conflict.

The blast in Adhamiyah, a Sunni area of north Baghdad, wounded another 30 people, while violence elsewhere in the country killed five more, officials said.

Tunisia's main trade union confederation called Monday for mass protests to pressure the Islamist-led government to accept a compromise roadmap for ending two months of political deadlock.

The UGTT announced that it would mobilize a "large, peaceful protest" in Tunis and gatherings in all regions of the country, without saying when.

Russian objections to a tough U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria's chemical weapons are holding up an international plan to destroy President Bashar Assad's banned poison arms, diplomats said Monday.

With world leaders gathering at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, the deadlock is a new blow to international efforts to halt the 30-month-old conflict.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday called any possible foreign military intervention against Syria a form of "aggression" that would rattle the entire region and contravene international law.

Putin told a summit of an ex-Soviet security group that he was grateful for its decision to support Moscow's refusal to sanction strikes against President Bashar Assad's regime for its alleged use of chemical weapons.