Iran stands fully behind Syria and blames the United States and Arab nations for the bloody unrest shaking its ally, media on Monday quoted a deputy foreign minister as saying.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran underlines its total support for the Syrian people and government," Hossein Amir Abdollahian said, according to Iran's official IRNA news agency.

China on Monday urged Israel to stop air raids on Gaza and called on both sides for an immediate ceasefire after Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu vowed no let-up against rocket-firing militants.

Israel launched another spate of air strikes earlier Monday, bringing the death toll in Gaza to 20 in three days of tit-for-tat violence that began with Israel's killing of a senior militant on Friday.

The bodies of 47 women and children, some with their throats slit, were found in the flashpoint Syrian city of Homs prompting the opposition to call Monday for foreign military intervention.

The Syrian authorities accused "terrorist gangs" of carrying out the killings in a bid to intensify pressure on President Bashar al-Assad's regime at a meeting at the United Nations on Monday of foreign ministers of the major powers.

U.S. drones bombed suspected al-Qaida arms caches in a hilly region in Yemen's restive southern province of Abyan on Sunday, witnesses told Agence France Presse.

Six missiles targeted the suspected weapons hideouts in Jabal Khanfar, a hill overlooking the Abyan town of Jaar, which is controlled by al-Qaida militants, the witnesses said.

At least 34 people, almost half of them civilians, were killed across Syria on Sunday as peace envoy Kofi Annan held a second round of talks with President Bashar al Assad, a monitoring group said.

The casualties comprised 15 civilians, 14 regular army soldiers and five rebel fighters, with most of the casualties occurring in the provinces of Idlib and Damascus and in the city of Hama, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal on Sunday slammed the Syrian regime, accusing it of committing "butchery against its people."

At least 8,500 people, most of them civilians, have been killed since the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime began in March 2011, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.

International peace envoy Kofi Annan emerged optimistic on Sunday from a second round of talks with President Bashar al-Assad, but warned that ending the bloodshed in Syria would be "tough."

"It's going to be tough, it's going to be difficult, but we have to have hope. I am optimistic," Annan told reporters in Damascus after the meeting.

An Egyptian military tribunal has acquitted an army doctor of an accusation of public obscenity filed by a protester who claimed she was forced to undergo a virginity test while in detention.

Samira Ibrahim won a civilian court ruling last year that affirmed the tests were taking place at military jails and ordered they be halted.

The Obama administration and its allies are engaged in serious discussions about potential military involvement in Syria, The Washington Post quoted officials as saying.

“Possibilities include directly arming opposition forces, sending troops to guard a humanitarian corridor or “safe zone” for the rebels, or an air assault on Syrian air defenses,” according to the officials from the U.S. and other nations opposed to Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Iraqi teenagers widely perceived to be gay are being brutally killed in Baghdad with Shiite militias distributing lists of targets warning of further assaults, officials and human rights groups say.

At least 15 teenagers, described as "emos" for their tight-fitting black clothes and alternative hairstyles, have been stoned, beaten to death or shot dead in the past month, medics say.