A roadside bomb on Tuesday ripped through an armored car killing two local politicians and badly wounding a third in a disputed town north of Baghdad, officials said.

The explosion struck just north of the town of Tuz Khurmatu, 175 kilometers (110 miles) from the capital, and also killed one of the group's bodyguards and wounded another, according to a police colonel and a medic at the local hospital.

An Israeli man and a Norwegian woman kidnapped by armed Bedouin tribesmen in Egypt's Sinai peninsula four days ago were set free on Tuesday, state news agency MENA said.

The pair had been traveling between the resort of Taba and coastal town of Dahab when they were abducted Friday. They were freed thanks to the "efforts" of Bedouin tribesmen, MENA said, citing the security services.

The resignation of the "courageous" chief of Syria's opposition is regrettable but will not affect the U.S. government's support for the rebels, officials said Monday.

Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib's abrupt decision to step down from the National Coalition has underscored divisions among the opposition, but U.S. officials said Washington would not withdraw its backing for the group.

A Muslim man was sentenced to death on Monday after having been found guilty of killing two Coptic Christians in southern Egypt in 2011, court sources said.

The court in Sohag, 500 kilometers (300 miles) south of Cairo, convicted Mahmud Abdel Nazir, 50, of having killed two Copts, wounded three others and started a fire to avenge what he called the murder of his brother by a Copt.

Israel and Turkey began talks Monday on compensation for the families of victims of a deadly 2010 flotilla raid, for which the Jewish state apologized last week, ending a near three-year diplomatic rift.

"Officials delegated by the two sides will work on the compensation issue. We gave the kickstart for it today," Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc told reporters after a weekly cabinet meeting.

Rebels fighting to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime on Monday sealed off the country's only two border posts with Jordan, a military official said.

"The Free Syrian Army closed the two crossings of Daraa and Naseeb from their side after they took control of them," the Jordanian official told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.

Egypt's prosecutor general on Monday ordered the arrest of five young opposition activists on charges of inciting violence, following clashes last week in Cairo, state news agency MENA reported.

The order came as a warning from President Mohamed Morsi that political figures could be sanctioned if found to have stirred up the unrest drew the ire of the opposition and newspapers.

The United Nations is removing about half of the 100 international staffers it has in Syria as attacks edge closer to U.N. buildings, a spokesman said Monday.

Mortar shells have fallen on the Damascus hotel used by U.N. workers, according to U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky, who blamed worsening security conditions for the decision to evacuate staff.

Five Turkish fighter jets staged surveillance flights on Monday over Kurdish rebel camps in northern Iraq, a military source told Agence France Presse.

The F-16s took off from their base in Kurdish-majority Diyarbakir province and flew over outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) camps in northern Iraq, the source added.

Family members of Libya's Moammar Gadhafi who had taken refuge in Algeria during the revolution that toppled the long-time dictator have now moved to Oman, Libya's foreign minister said on Monday.

"Some of the family has moved to Oman," Mohammed Abdelaziz told reporters in Doha following reports that Gadhafi's relatives who fled to Algeria in August 2011 had now left that country.