Iraq's caretaker premier Nuri al-Maliki said Wednesday it will take a court ruling for him to leave power, defying the president's decision to task a rival with forming a government.

"I confirm that the government will continue and there will not be a replacement for it without a decision from the federal court," Maliki said in his televised weekly address.

Ten civilians and three army technicians were killed on Wednesday when a bomb planted by presumed al-Qaida militants exploded in south Yemen, a security official said.

The device placed in the Tibn area of Lahij province went off when the soldiers were trying to defuse it, but the area had not been sealed off to keep civilians away, the official added.

The Yazidis are a small, misunderstood and long-persecuted religious sect rooted in the town of Sinjar, in northern Iraq, and in parts of Syria and Turkey.

No one knows the exact size of the Yazidi population. Estimates range from tens of thousands to 500,000 or more. Over centuries, they have been the target of violence and purges, including during the Ottoman empire, and have survived as a close-knit community that does not proselytize.

Fearing a genocide of Christians, the Vatican has given its approval to U.S. military air strikes in Iraq -- a rare exception to its policy of peaceful conflict resolution.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has confirmed Australian planes will join humanitarian airdrops in Iraq and did not rule out the possibility of greater military involvement. 

Abbott, speaking in London after security talks, said Canberra was in discussions with international partners on how to protect displaced Iraqi civilians trapped on Mount Sinjar by jihadist Islamic State militants.

The United States has sent 130 more military advisers to northern Iraq to assess the scope of the humanitarian crisis there, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Tuesday.

Five Palestinians and an Italian journalist were killed in Gaza Wednesday when Israeli ordnance detonated as experts tried to disable it just hours before the end of a 72-hour truce.

The blast occurred in the northern town of Beit Lahiya as Egyptian mediators scrambled to persuade Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to extend a three-day ceasefire, which expires at midnight (2100 GMT).

Negotiators in Cairo addressed the thorny issue of the Israeli Gaza blockade on Tuesday night, as the second day of a 72-hour truce neared its end.

As Gaza's residents ventured out to try to piece together their battered lives, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators held a second round of indirect talks aimed at finding a durable end to the five-week confrontation.

An activist from Morocco's February 20 movement has been sentenced by a Tangiers court to a year in jail for a "false torture allegation", her lawyer told Agence France Presse.

Wafaa Charaf must also pay a fine of 50,000 Moroccan dirhams (about $6,000, 4,500 euros) in damages and interest and a fine of 1,000 dirhams ($120, 90 euros).

The Pentagon said Tuesday it had made progress in destroying Syrian chemical weapons, saying specialists on a U.S. military ship had neutralized "100 percent" of a precursor used to make lethal Sarin gas.

After a global outcry over deadly chemical attacks in a Damascus suburb last year that may have killed as many as 1,400 people, President Bashar Assad's regime agreed to an international plan to destroy its stockpile.