Prominent liberal Egyptian leader Mohamed ElBaradei was sworn in on Sunday as Egypt's interim vice president for foreign relations, the presidency said in a statement, as Nabil Fahmy was appointed as foreign minister.

The appointment of ElBaradei, a former head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog and a Nobel peace laureate, follows the military overthrow of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi on July 3.

Violence including an apparently-coordinated series of bombings that struck central and south Iraq on Sunday killed 31 people, security sources and medics said, bringing the July death toll to more than 370.

The attacks are just the latest in a surge in violence in which more than 2,600 people have died so far this year, according to Agence France Presse figures based on security and medical sources.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is set to make a two-day visit this week to neighboring Iraq, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's spokesman said on Sunday.

Ahmadinejad was invited by President Jalal Talabani, but will be hosted by Vice President Khudayr al-Khuzaie, as Talabani is abroad for medical treatment, Ali Mussawi said.

A home-made bomb wounded four Bahraini policemen outside a Shiite village, the Interior Ministry said on Sunday, in the latest unrest to rock the Sunni-ruled Shiite-majority Gulf state.

The bomb was "planted by terrorists" near Janabiyah village, west of Manama, the ministry said in a statement carried by the official BNA news agency, without specifying when the explosion took place.

Investigators began questioning Egypt's ousted President Mohammed Morsi and members of his Muslim Brotherhood on Sunday over their involvement in a 2011 prison break, judicial sources told AFP.

The inquiry follows allegations that Morsi and senior Brotherhood members escaped from Wadi Natrun prison during the uprising that ended former president Hosni Mubarak's three-decade rule.

Two French journalists kidnapped shortly after arriving in Syria in June are alive and Paris is working for their release, the defense minister said on Sunday.

Didier Francois, 53, a seasoned reporter in troublespots with Europe 1 radio, and 22-year-old photographer Edouard Elias were taken hostage after being stopped at a checkpoint on the road to Aleppo.

Shelling killed at least 13 people on Sunday in the Damascus district of Qaboon, where fierce fighting between the army and rebels has trapped hundreds of families, a monitor said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported a car bomb detonated outside a police station in Damascus province, causing an unknown number of casualties.

A generator exploded in a village home in Yemen killing 14 people, most of them members of a single family, a provincial official said on Sunday.

Eight women were among the dead in the blast, which flattened the two-storey house in the village of Qadam, in Al-Mahwit province west of the capital, the official told the state-run Saba news agency.

A former Israeli intelligence chief said on Saturday that authorities held a person in secret during the 1970s but implied that the prisoner was no longer in custody.

"Thirty-five years ago, in my post as head of military intelligence, I approved the detention in prison of Prisoner X, in total isolation," Haaretz newspaper quoted Shlomo Gazit as saying in an email.

Egypt's new prime minister moved closer to forming a cabinet on Saturday, as prosecutors looked into criminal complaints against ousted Islamist president Mohammed Morsi and members of his Muslim Brotherhood.

Hazem al-Beblawi held talks with candidates for ministerial posts accompanied by vice president Mohammed ElBaradei, and the consultations will continue on Sunday.