Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri has ruled that the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Nusra Front in Syria should operate as separate entities, according to a letter posted on Al-Jazeera television's website.

ISI leader Sheikh Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had "made a mistake" by announcing a merger between the two radical Islamist groups in the neighbouring Arab states"without consulting us," he said.

Two near-simultaneous car bombs and a suicide attack killed 13 people in a wholesale market north of Baghdad on Monday, the latest in a surge in violence that authorities have struggled to control.

The blasts, which left another 53 people wounded, struck a predominantly Shiite town as fruit and vegetable stall owners were crowding the market, purchasing goods for the day's trading, a police officer and a medic said.

An Indonesian woman died Sunday in a fire lit by workers outside her country's consulate in western Saudi Arabia, where thousands converged seeking to resolve their immigration status, a consular source said.

Some 8,000 Indonesians gathered outside the consulate in Jeddah trying to sort out their papers as illegal foreign workers in the kingdom face a deadline to regularize their position or leave.

Building starts on settler homes in the Israeli-occupied West Bank hit a seven-year high in the first quarter of 2013, Israeli watchdog Peace Now said on Sunday.

"Between January 2013 and March 2013, construction of 865 new housing units began," the NGO said in a statement quoting recently released government statistics.

Ten Shiite Zaidi rebels were killed and 38 wounded in clashes with police outside the headquarters of Yemen's national security services in Sanaa on Sunday, a senior security official said.

The official said the violence broke out as the rebels, among a crowd demanding the release of members of their community, attacked the building with automatic weapons and grenades.

The Libyan army chief of staff, General Yusef al-Mangoush, resigned on Sunday after deadly unrest in Benghazi, members of the country's highest political authority the General National Congress said.

"The chief of staff presented his resignation that was accepted by the congress," GNC member Abdullah al-Gmati said, adding that the assembly had already been preparing a vote to suspend Mangoush.

Angry residents of an Egyptian village beat a man to death and dragged his body through the streets on Sunday after he allegedly raped and murdered a teenage girl, a security official said.

The killing in the Nile Delta village of Quesna in Menufiya province is the latest lynching case with vigilante justice on the rise amid growing lawlessness.

Jordan on Sunday announced the start of military exercises involving more than 8,000 soldiers and observers from 19 different countries, but insisted the manoeuvres were unrelated to the conflict in neighboring Syria.

Around 4,500 U.S. troops and 3,000 Jordanian soldiers are taking part in the air, land and sea "Eager Lion 2013" exercise, which lasts until June 20.

An air strike believed to have been carried out by a U.S. drone killed six presumed members of al-Qaida in north Yemen on Sunday, a tribal source said.

The air raid targeted a vehicle in the Khab al-Shath area near al-Jawf, the source said, adding that the six dead included suspected al-Qaida member Hassan al-Saleh Huraydan and his brother.

Islamist rebels fighting the Syrian regime shot dead a 15-year-old child in front of his parents and siblings Sunday after accusing him of blasphemy, a monitoring group said.

"An unidentified Islamist rebel group shot dead a 15-year-old child who worked as a coffee seller in (the northern city of Aleppo), after they accused him of blasphemy," said Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman.