Fifteen people were wounded on Tuesday by a car bomb targeting a church in Kirkuk in northern Iraq, a police officer and a priest said.

The bomb exploded at the Holy Family church in the north of Kirkuk at about 5:30 am (0230 GMT), wounding 15 people including church staff and people in neighboring houses, the high-ranking officer in the Kirkuk police said.

Israeli warplanes raided the Gaza Strip early Tuesday, witnesses and the Israeli military said.

The air raid targeted a tunnel dug under the border between the south of the Strip and Egypt, near Rafah, the Palestinian witnesses said.

The United States on Monday weighed possible further sanctions against Damascus as it hoped for "a strong and unified message" from the U.N. Security Council over the deadly crackdown in Syria.

"We've issued now several sets of sanctions against (President Bashar) Assad and his regime," State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner told reporters.

The Syrian army pressed on Monday with a deadly crackdown on anti-regime dissent, even as international condemnation swelled ahead of a U.N. meeting on the crisis.

The Local Coordination Committees reported Monday evening that the army was firing tank shells and machinegun rounds at several neighborhoods in the flashpoint protest city of Hama. One person was killed in the shelling, the committees said.

France on Monday said it had given Libyan rebels 259 million dollars (181 million euros) in frozen funds that used to belong to the regime of strongman leader Moammar Gadhafi.

"The NTC (National Transitional Council) will now be able to use these funds for purchases of a humanitarian nature," the French foreign ministry said in a statement.

Egyptian armed forces and riot police moved into Cairo's Tahrir Square on Monday to disperse several dozen protesters who refused to leave the area after most groups had suspended a sit-in.

Military police shot into the air to disperse the protesters, and proceeded to beat them with batons when they refused to leave the square, a security official said.

Germany's opposition Green party is taking the government to court over a reported secret deal to sell hundreds of tanks to Saudi Arabia, a party spokeswoman said Monday.

"A suit brought by the members of parliament Christian Stroebele, Claudia Roth and Katja Keul was filed on Friday" with the Constitutional Court, the spokeswoman added.

Fierce fighting broke out Monday between Yemen's army and tribesmen who back anti-regime protesters in the strife-torn country's second city of Taez, witnesses said.

The battles began early in the morning and carried on intermittently during the day in a suburb north of Taez which links the city of four million residents to the tribal areas around it, said the witnesses.

Germany Monday condemned what it called a war by the Syrian government against its own people, after calling for a meeting of the United Nations Security Council on the latest deadly crackdown.

Foreign ministry spokesman Martin Schaefer renewed Berlin's call for a robust response from the council and new European Union sanctions against Damascus after activists said security forces killed nearly 140 people Sunday.

The European Union is to add five new names to a list of Syrian individuals and companies already targeted by a visa ban and assets freeze, EU diplomats said Monday.

"We will continue with our policy of sanctions,” said a spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, confirming that a new round of measures against Syrians involved in the crackdown against protesters was "imminent.”