A car bomb on Monday ripped through Jaramana, a mainly Christian and Druze suburb of Damascus, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding that there were unconfirmed reports of several wounded.

This is not the first time the southeastern suburb has been hit by a car bomb. On August 28, at least 27 people attending a funeral for two supporters of the Damascus regime were killed in a similar attack, according to the Britain-based watchdog.

The new head of the International Committee of the Red Cross will travel to Damascus on Monday and will meet Syrian President Bashar Assad the following day, his office said.

"Peter Maurer arrives today (Monday) in Syria for a three-day visit, the first since he took up his duties as president on July 1," the ICRC said in a statement, adding that Maurer would meet Assad and other top Syrian officials.

France's foreign minister said Monday Western powers are preparing a tough response in case Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime deploys chemical or biological weapons in its civil war.

Laurent Fabius said: "Our response ... would be massive and blistering."

A Syrian warplane bombed a building in the northern rebel-held town of al-Bab in Aleppo province on Monday, killing at least 10 men, six women and two children, a watchdog said.

"The victims included two children, a girl and a boy," Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told Agence France Presse. "They died when the fighter jet bombed the building where they were sheltered."

Arab monarchies in the Gulf on Sunday lambasted Syria's regime for deploying heavy weapons against civilians while ordering Iran not to interfere in their internal affairs.

The six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council at a meeting in Jeddah also urged the international community to "assume their responsibilities and take measures to protect civilians" in Syria, where according to a watchdog more than 26,000 people have been killed in a revolt that erupted in March 2011.

August marked the bloodiest month in Syria since the uprising against President Bashar Assad's regime erupted in March last year, with at least 5,440 people killed, a watchdog said on Sunday.

Last week alone accounted for 1,248 deaths, according to figures compiled by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has a network of activists on the ground in Syria.

Two bombings targeting security forces in northern Iraq killed two policemen and two soldiers on Sunday evening, security and medical officials said.

In the first attack in the town of Tuz Khurmatu, 175 kilometers (110 miles) north of Baghdad, a roadside bomb targeted an army patrol at around 6:30 pm (1530 GMT).

Egypt's president is too new in his post and doesn't fully understand Syrian politics, a Damascus official said Sunday, after Mohammed Morsi publicly sided with those opposed to President Bashar Assad.

"We heard the words of President Morsi. If I may say so, it was a disappointment," Syrian foreign ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi told Lebanon's NBN television.

Storms sweeping across northeast Algeria have killed 20 people and injured 56, the state news agency APS on Sunday cited emergency services as saying.

It said nine people died when torrential rain and high winds hit the regions of Tebessa 600 kilometers (360 miles) east of Algiers, Tlemcen (600 kilometers west of the capital) and M'sila (250 kilometers to its south).

A car bomb Sunday in the eastern Libya city of Benghazi killed a former security official who served under slain strongman Moammar Gadhafi’s regime, a top official said.

"A colonel of the former internal security apparatus was killed and his escort was seriously wounded" by the explosion of his own car, Deputy Interior Minister Younis al-Sharif told Agence France Presse.