A senior Sunni politician on Thursday blamed Iraq's anti-terror forces, which report directly to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's office, for the shooting of his young nephew the previous day.

The remarks from Atheel al-Nujaifi, governor of the northern province of Nineveh, threaten to further raise political and sectarian tensions with Maliki's Shiite-led government, which has already been grappling with days of protests by the country's Sunni minority.

A new U.S. drone strike on Thursday killed three al-Qaida suspects in the town of Rada in Yemen's central al-Bayda province, the site of similar recent attacks, tribal sources there said.

Mukbel Abbad, brother-in-law of Tareq al-Dahab who led the al-Qaida fighters in a brief January 2012 raid on Rada, was killed along with two other suspects, the sources said.

Slovenia on Thursday recognized Syria's opposition National Coalition forces as the only legitimate representative of the Syrian people.

"Syrian president Bashar Assad has lost all legitimacy to continue governing Syria and the National Coalition has proved to be a relevant and credible partner in discussions with the international community," the government said in a statement.

emen's former president Ali Abdullah Saleh is to travel to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment, diplomatic sources said Thursday, as his opponents called for him to be kept out of politics ahead of a stalled national dialogue.

"One week ago, Saleh applied for a visa to receive medical treatment in Saudi Arabia. There is Saudi approval for the request," a diplomat said.

A truck bomb killed 19 worshippers south of Baghdad on Thursday as pilgrims from around the world thronged Iraq's shrine city of Karbala to finish commemorations for a revered figure in Shiite Islam.

The attack came despite a massive security operation mounted to safeguard the millions of Shiite Muslims traveling to and from Karbala for the conclusion of Arbaeen mourning rituals.

Egypt has set up a council to negotiate the release of its nationals arrested in the UAE reportedly for spying and raising funds for President Mohamed Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood party, local media said Thursday.

The council, formed by the newly-empowered senate, will "work towards the release of Egyptian doctors in the Emirates and investigate the circumstances of (their) arrest," newspapers quoted senate president Ahmed Fahmi as saying.

Israel plans to step up arrests of suspected militants in the occupied West Bank to prevent a rising tide of low-intensity conflict and civil unrest from turning into an uprising, security sources say.

"There is a certain (Palestinian) awakening," one source told AFP.

Iraqi authorities on Thursday ordered the release of 11 female detainees facing criminal charges and vowed to transfer women prisoners to jails in their home provinces, in a move that addresses one of the main demands of a wave of protests by the country's Sunni minority against the Shiite-led government.

The demonstrations erupted nearly two weeks ago following the arrest of bodyguards assigned to Finance Minister Rafia al-Issawi, one of the central government's most senior Sunni officials. The protests, however, tap into deeper Sunni grievances of perceived discrimination by Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government.

The acting head of the criminal investigations department in Libya's second city Benghazi has been kidnapped at gunpoint, officials told Agence France Presse on Thursday.

"Abdelsalam al-Mahdawi was kidnapped late Wednesday when travelling from his farm to the criminal investigations department," a security official told AFP.

Shiite pilgrims from across Iraq and around the world thronged the shrine city of Karbala on Thursday for the climax of annual mourning rituals amid tight security over fears of militant attacks.

An Agence France Presse correspondent said massive crowds of people flooded the streets of the city, which officials say has seen millions of visitors in the run-up to the Arbaeen commemorations, as sad songs blared from loudspeakers.