Iraqi officials said Tuesday they would up the salaries of Sunni militiamen who fought al-Qaida during the country's brutal sectarian war, the latest bid to appease mostly-Sunni anti-government rallies.

The immediate two-thirds increase in wages for the Sahwa, otherwise known as the Sons of Iraq or the Awakening, comes as officials have trumpeted a substantial prisoner release in the face of more than a month of demonstrations in the country's north and west.

Israel on Tuesday boycotted a special U.N. Human Rights Council review of its rights situation, becoming the first country ever to snub such a session.

"I see that the delegation of Israel is not in the room," council president Remigiusz Henczel told the delegates at the United Nations in Geneva.

Palestinian fighter Saeed Marragha, alias Abou Moussa, died of illness Tuesday in Syria where his Fatah-Intifada group was based decades after splitting from the mainstream Fatah faction, his group said.

Abou Moussa "died at dawn at a hospital" in Damascus, succumbing to a long illness, a Fatah-Intifada spokesman said, adding the veteran military commander would be buried in Syria's capital following noon Muslim prayers on Wednesday.

Egypt's judiciary has ordered the arrest of members of the "Black Bloc", a shadowy group of militants who have appeared among protesters during the latest clashes with police, a judicial source said Tuesday.

Prosecutor General Talaat Ibrahim Abdallah has authorized the arrest "of all people suspected of belonging to the group and ordered that they be brought before the courts," the source said.

Iraq's top energy official repeated claims on Tuesday that the country's autonomous Kurdish region was "illegally" exporting oil, the latest in a long-running dispute between the two sides.

The remarks from Hussein al-Shahristani, the deputy prime minister responsible for energy affairs, come as the central government in Baghdad and Kurdish authorities in Arbil tussle over a disputed oil exploration deal with ExxonMobil and a row over energy contracts.

Two Tunisian security agents were wounded in a gunfight with suspected hardline Islamists during a night time operation in the western town of Kasserine, police said on Tuesday.

"The special operation targeted three people suspected of belonging to a Salafist group," said a senior police official in Kasserine.

A military tribunal on Tuesday handed two police officers jail terms of 10 and 20 years respectively for the "voluntary and involuntary homicide" of five Tunisians killed during the 2010-2011 uprising.

The tribunal in the central city of Sfax sentenced Commander Mourad Jouini to 10 years in prison and Lieutenant Bassam Akremi, in absentia, to 20 years, a court official told Agence France Presse.

Saudi Arabia has set new limitations on the powers of its notorious religious police, charged with ensuring compliance with Islamic morality but often accused of abuses, its chief said on Tuesday.

The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice "once had much expanded powers, but with the new system... some of these powers, such as interrogating suspects and pressing charges," will be restricted to the police and public prosecution, Sheikh Abdullatif Abdel Aziz al-Sheikh told Agence France Presse.

Two soldiers and 16 al-Qaida militants were killed on Tuesday in a Yemeni military offensive against the jihadists who are suspected of holding Western hostages, sources said.

"Sixteen al-Qaida fighters were killed in four raids when the Yemeni aviation targeted positions near Manaseh," a stronghold of the terror network in the province of Bayda, a tribal source said on condition of anonymity.

A Cairo tribunal on Tuesday upheld death sentences passed on seven Egyptian Coptic Christians in absentia for their involvement in a movie that ridiculed the Prophet Mohammed, a judicial source said.

The accused, including the director of the movie that triggered outrage across the Muslim world when it surfaced last September, are currently living in the United States.