Al-Qaida's front group in Iraq claimed dozens of attacks in Baghdad this year, including a suicide bomb at a funeral and the assassination of the head of a women's prison, in a statement seen on Tuesday.

In a post on jihadist forum Honein, the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) listed 43 incidents it was responsible for between January 10 and February 10 in the Iraqi capital.

Al-Qaida gunmen have killed a soldier on the edge of Yemen's southwestern city of Bayda, the defense ministry said Tuesday, two days after a massive assault by the extremists killed scores of troops.

"The terrorist elements attacked security forces in Zaher checkpoint (late on Monday) killing the soldier Faisal Abas al-Sabri and wounding two others," the ministry's website26sep.net said, identifying the assailants as "al-Qaida gunmen."

Iran has sentenced a prominent human rights lawyer, Abdolfattah Soltani, to 18 years in jail for allegedly spreading anti-regime propaganda, several opposition websites reported on Tuesday.

"One of my husband's lawyers was told that my husband was sentenced to 18 years in jail in Borazjan (south Iran) and was also banned from practicing law for 20 years," Soltani's wife, Masoumeh Dehqan, told the reformist opposition website Rahebsabz.net.

A Saudi Arabian diplomat was shot in the chest and died in the Bangladesh capital in the early hours of Tuesday, the deputy commissioner of Dhaka police told Agence France Presse.

Police found Khalaf Al Ali at an intersection just two buildings away from his residence in the city's upmarket Gulshan district and rushed him to a hospital where he died three hours later, Lutful Kabir said.

Canada imposed Monday a fresh round of sanctions on Syria targeting the central bank and seven cabinet ministers in a bid to halt President Bashar al-Assad's deadly crackdown on dissent.

The Canadian embassy in Damascus and a consulate also were shuttered and Canadian diplomats left the country, the foreign affairs ministry said.

Two explosions on Monday hit a pipeline which supplies Egyptian gas to Israel and Jordan, marking the 13th such attack in just over a year, security officials said.

Six gunmen in an unmarked vehicle set explosives in two different parts of the pipeline, about 15 meters (yards) apart, one official told Agence France Presse.

Top Republican Senator John McCain on Monday called for U.S. air strikes on Syrian forces to protect population centers and create safe havens for opponents of the regime.

McCain, who lost to President Barack Obama in the 2008 election, said while the White House "deserves a lot of credit" for helping to build global efforts to isolate President Bashar al-Assad, it was time for a "new policy."

The European Union on Monday urged more international action on getting humanitarian aid into Syria and called for Russia to recognize the need for new Syrian leadership, as Paris urged Vladimir Putin to mark his return to the Russian presidency by dropping Moscow's support for the Syrian regime.

"We need to see some action on Syria from the international community in order to get humanitarian aid that's so desperately needed into Homs right now," EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton told reporters in Prague.

Police in Jordan's southern city of Tafileh fired tear gas on Monday to disperse angry unemployed demonstrators who demanded that the authorities make good on their promise of jobs.

"Scores of unemployed youth demonstrated in Tafileh, throwing stones at the governorate building as well as police, who had to fire tear gas to break up the protest," the state-run Petra news agency reported.

The United States said Monday it would be a "welcome development" if Iran's Supreme Court has overturned a death sentence for spying handed down to former U.S. Marine Amir Mirzai Hekmati.

"We have seen some credible reporting that the Iranian Supreme Court has now ordered a retrial in Mr. Hekmati's case," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters.