At least eight people were killed and more than a dozen injured on Monday in twin car blasts outside a court building in the southern Russian city of Makhachkala in the restless region of Dagestan.

The local investigative committee said that "within the space of a few minutes, two cars blew up. At least eight people died. The number of people injured is being checked."

A U.S. diplomat accused by the Russians of being a CIA spy after they caught him allegedly trying to recruit agents last week left the country on Sunday, Russian television reported.

Ryan Fogle flew out of Moscow, Russia's NTV state television channel said, broadcasting pictures showing him at Sheremetyevo International Airport.

Advanced S-300 Russian air defense weapons, which Moscow has pledged to deliver to Syria, could reach Hizbullah and beyond, a senior Israeli defense official has warned.

Amos Gilad, head of the diplomatic-security branch of Israel's defense ministry, told Channel 2 that such a transfer is a threat to the Jewish state, to the U.S. and to the Persian Gulf.

Russia's security services openly named the alleged U.S. intelligence agency's Moscow station chief Friday in a rare breach of protocol after arresting a purported CIA agent working undercover.

Russia announced this week that it had caught alleged agent Ryan Fogle as he prepared to recruit a member of the Russian security forces. Footage was aired showing him wearing a blond wig and his array of spying equipment, including a compass and an old-fashioned mobile phone.

Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni on Friday slammed Russian arms deals with Syria, after US media reported further weapons shipments to the Damascus regime.

Livni's comments also come in the wake of a surprise visit by CIA chief John Brennan to Israel to discuss the situation in Israel's war-torn neighbor.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon and Russia agreed Friday that a peace conference on Syria should be held "as soon as possible" even as Moscow defied growing global pressure over its arms supplies to the Damascus regime.

Ban met Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov ahead of talks later Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin about an impending international meeting on Syria that should include representatives of the two warring parties for the first time.

Iran should take part in an international conference agreed by Moscow and Washington to help broker an end to the Syria conflict, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov insisted in an interview broadcast Thursday.

Lavrov told Lebanese television that Russia believed the conference, which he and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced in Moscow last week, should include Iran, a key Syria ally, while stressing that this had not been agreed.

French President Francois Hollande said Thursday that more efforts were needed to convince Moscow to drop its support for Syrian leader Bashar Assad.

"We must have a frank discussion with Russia to convince it that it is in its interests, in the interests of the region, in the interests of peace, to finish with Bashar Assad," Hollande told a press conference.

There is no government strategy to fight the spread of AIDS in Russia, where the number of deaths caused by the disease continues to grow, a senior healthcare official said on Thursday.

"We have no national strategy to fight against AIDS," the director of the Russian Federal Agency against AIDS, Vadim Pokrovsky, told a news conference.

Russia on Wednesday accused the United States of "crude and clumsy" spying on its territory after a suspected CIA agent was caught in Moscow seeking to recruit an agent while disguised in a blonde wig.

The foreign ministry issued an official protest to the U.S. ambassador who it summoned to an early morning meeting, but signs also grew that neither side wanted the Cold War-style incident to develop into a full scale crisis.