A militant with the armed wing of Gaza's ruling Hamas movement died in Gaza City on Wednesday after the car he was travelling in exploded, Palestinian medical sources said.

There was no accusation against Israel, prompting suspicions it was a "work accident" -- the euphemism for the accidental detonation of explosives held by militants.

A wheelchair-bound Israeli who set himself alight over the spiraling cost of living died of his injuries, medics said on Wednesday, raising to two the number of Israelis who have died in such protests.

A spokesman for Tel HaShomer hospital near Tel Aviv said Akiva Mafi, 45, died of injuries sustained on July 22, in a development two days after the government voted through a harsh package of austerity measures likely to further hit the underprivileged.

A firefight between Yemeni security forces and gunmen dressed in police uniforms killed 15 people and wounded 43 at the interior ministry in Sanaa on Tuesday, medical and security officials said.

"The number of dead has increased to 15, in addition to 43 wounded," a medic said, while a security official confirmed the toll, saying it included one dead civilian.

More than 300 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the eastern Syrian province of Deir Ezzor in July, when army operations intensified, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Tuesday.

Activists recently posted videos showing gory images of bloody, mangled bodies, including women and children, and mutilated faces strewn across several city streets.

Tunisia's state of emergency has been extended by just one month, rather than the usual three, due to an improvement in the country's security situation, the president's office announced on Tuesday.

It is the sixth time the state of emergency has been extended since it came into force on January 14, 2011, when a mass uprising prompted veteran strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to flee the country.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that he had not yet made any decision about a possible attack against Iran but reaffirmed his country's right to defend itself.

"I have not taken a decision" on any attack against Iranian nuclear facilities, Netanyahu said in response to a question during an interview with the private television Channel 2.

Slain Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s son Seif al-Islam believes he should be tried before the International Criminal Court if justice is to be served, his lawyers said Tuesday.

"The only way for Libya and the Libyan people to have justice is for the ICC to try this case in a fair, impartial and independent manner," he was quoted as saying in a defense document submitted to the court.

Gunmen kidnapped on Tuesday a seven-member delegation from the Iranian Red Crescent visiting the eastern city of Benghazi, the Libyan Red Crescent reported.

"An armed group detained at 1:00 am a delegation of seven members of the Iranian Red Crescent after they left the headquarters of the Libyan Red Crescent in Benghazi," a statement said.

The opposition Syrian National Council said on Tuesday that it is too early to form a government in exile and that a leading dissident's announcement that he had been tasked with forming one was damaging.

"The formation of a government in exile was a hasty decision, and we wish it had not happened," SNC chief Abdel Basset Sayda told Agence France Presse. "It actually weakens the opposition."

For 16 months, Syria's two biggest cities Damascus and Aleppo were seen as safe havens from the country's bloodshed, but deadly fighting over the past two weeks is forcing people who took refuge there to flee yet again.

Displaced at least twice since fleeing the flashpoint central city of Homs in March, one family is now looking to escape Damascus and possibly return home, after the capital was engulfed in violence last week.