Riad al-Asaad, commander of the rebel Free Syrian Army, was wounded overnight in a blast that hit his car in eastern Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights watchdog said on Monday.

A government official in Ankara confirmed Asaad had been hurt, saying he had lost a leg in the attack but that he was in "good condition" after being rushed across the Syrian border into Turkey for treatment.

Arab nations and Turkey, helped by the CIA, have dramatically increased military aid to Syrian rebels in recent months, The New York Times reported Monday.

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency was helping their efforts, the newspaper added, citing air traffic data and interviews with unnamed officials and the rebel commanders.

The opposition will take over Syria's vacant seat at the Arab League, a high-ranking league official told Agence France Presse Monday, a day ahead of a leaders' summit in Doha.

"The opposition has been invited to the Arab summit and will occupy Syria's seat at the Arab League," the official said.

Israel and Turkey have "a thousand reasons" to be on friendly terms again following an air-clearing apology over the deaths of nine Turks in a 2010 raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla, Israeli President Shimon Peres said on Turkish television Sunday.

"I can think of a thousand reasons why Turkey and Israel should be friends; I cannot find one reason why they shouldn't be friends," Peres said in an interview with CNN Turk.

Members of Syrian President Bashar Assad's own Alawite sect gathered in Cairo on Sunday to announce their support for his overthrow in an unprecedented gathering.

The Alawites, joined by other minority representatives, said they wanted to disassociate their sect from Assad's brutal crackdown on the rebellion in which an estimated 70,000 people have been killed.

The Egyptian state prosecutor decided on Sunday to extradite to Libya two former regime officials wanted on charges of corruption, a judicial source told Agence France Presse.

Former Libyan ambassador Ali Maria and and Mohammed Ibrahim, the brother of senior Gadhafi-era official Ahmed Ibrahim, were arrested in Cairo on March 19 along with Moammar Gadhafi's cousin Ahmed Qaddaf al-Dam.

The opposition Syrian National Coalition has been invited to the Arab summit this week, bringing the rebels closer to filling Syria's seat in the Arab League, the group's Qatar envoy said Sunday.

The invitation was revealed as differences over the participation of the opponents of Syrian President Bashar Assad in the summit emerged during a ministerial preparatory meeting on Sunday.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry pressed Iraq to stop allowing Iranian flights apparently carrying military equipment through its airspace headed to Syria, on a surprise visit to Baghdad on Sunday.

Kerry warned Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki that Washington was "watching what Iraq is doing", the highest-level criticism yet of Baghdad for not inspecting flights which Tehran insists are carrying humanitarian supplies.

Israel's Shin Bet security service said on Sunday it had arrested five Palestinian teenagers on suspicion of involvement in a stone-throwing attack which critically injured an Israeli toddler.

The domestic security agency said the suspects, aged 16-17, confessed to stoning vehicles driven by Israeli settlers near the Palestinian village of Haris, in the northern West Bank, on March 14.

A rumor about the death of Syrian President Bashar Assad was massively shared on social media websites on Sunday, the French weekly magazine Le Point reported.

"News about Assad being shot dead by his Iranian bodyguard have not been confirmed yet,” the magazine said, revealing that the opposition's Free Syrian Army has denied such reports.