An Israeli court on Tuesday backed an Israeli government policy of allowing Christians from the Gaza Strip to pray at Israeli and West Bank holy sites, and denying the enclave's Muslims the same right.

The Supreme Court rejected an appeal lodged by six Gaza Muslims and Israeli non-governmental organization Gisha to challenge a ruling of the Beersheba District Court, which refused to intervene against the policy.

The United States on Tuesday added a wanted Saudi militant alleged to be a top trainer of foreign al-Qaida fighters in camps in Afghanistan to its list of global terrorists.

Azzam Abdullah Zureik al-Maulid al-Subhi, better known as Mansour al-Harbi, is among about 80 Saudi citizens which Saudi Arabia has put on its most wanted list and wants extradited, accusing them of ties to the al-Qaida network.

Syria's rebel forces attacked an oil field in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor on Tuesday, triggering a deadly firefight with troops, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Four rebel fighters and six soldiers were killed in a fierce clash that broke out with regime forces following the attack, said the Britain-based monitoring group.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday that the world needs to decide how to end the conflict in Syria and start planning for a political transition in Damascus.

"We must figure out how to hasten the day when bloodshed ends and the political transition begins," she said after talks with her South African counterpart Maite Nkoana-Mashabane.

More than 22,000 Iraqis have fled the violence in Syria for their home country in less than three weeks, joining over 12,000 Syrian refugees, a U.N. refugee agency official said on Tuesday.

"Since the 18th of July until yesterday (Monday), 22,300 Iraqi refugees have been registered" after having arrived from Syria, UNHCR Iraq representative Claire Bourgeois told a news conference in Baghdad.

Iraq is to "review" relations with Turkey after Ankara's foreign minister visited the disputed northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk without informing Baghdad, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said on Tuesday.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu's visit to Kirkuk on August 2 drew a furious reaction from Baghdad and brought already-chilly relations between the two countries to a new low.

An unholy brawl between rival hardline Islamists, some wielding knives, broke out in a Tunisian mosque, after hungry members of one group broke their fast a few minutes early, state media reported on Tuesday.

The bust-up occurred on Monday when followers of a certain Salafist scholar began to eat within the precincts of the Hidaya mosque in Beja, northern Tunisia, shortly before the evening call to prayer, which signals the end of the daily Ramadan fast, the TAP news agency reported.

Tehran will continue to back Syria under President Bashar Assad, which acts as a pillar of an Iranian-led regional alliance, top envoy Saeed Jalili told Assad in Damascus on Tuesday.

"Iran will never allow the resistance axis -- of which Syria is an essential pillar -- to break," said Jalili, a top aide to Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Kuwait's parliament failed to meet on Tuesday for the second week in a row as a majority of lawmakers boycotted the session amid an ongoing political crisis in the Gulf state.

Speaker Jassem al-Kharafi indefinitely adjourned parliament -- which was dissolved in December but reinstated by a court ruling in June -- after only four of the 50-member house and several ministers turned up.

Egypt's defense minister led mourners in a military funeral on Tuesday for 16 soldiers killed by Islamist militants near the border with Israel in the deadliest such attack in decades.

The minister, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, was joined by senior government officials and generals in a brief procession that followed the caskets, wrapped in the military flag, after prayers.