Iraq moved on Sunday to diversify its oil export routes to reduce the impact of a potential closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran on Baghdad's oil-dependent income, as well as the world economy.

The plans, recommended by the cabinet's energy and economics committees, include efforts to ramp up exports along a pipeline to Turkey, increase the amount of oil transported by road, and "urgently" fix disused transport pipelines, according to a statement from government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh.

A Syrian rights group said on Sunday it had filed a war crimes complaint with French authorities against former Syrian Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass who was reported this week to be in Paris.

The Syrian Association for Freedom provided AFP with a copy of the complaint it had filed with Paris prosecutors on Friday accusing Tlass of responsibility in "several war crimes including the massacre in the city of Hama in 1982."

Nouakchott has received requests from France and the International Criminal Court (ICC) to extradite Libya's ex-spy chief Abdullah Senussi, a security source said Sunday.

"For the time being two requests have been received by Mauritania. One from France arrived on Saturday and the second from the ICC on Sunday," the source told AFP.

Syria was hit by the third lethal car bombing of the weekend on Sunday as U.N. teams readied for a government-led humanitarian mission and to work to launch a monitoring operation to end a year of bloodshed.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, in a statement, said the latest blast targeted political security offices in the northern city of Aleppo, killing three civilians and wounding more than 25 others.

Syrian security forces mounted operations on Sunday in the northern province of Aleppo, northwestern Idlib, the east's Deir Ezzor region, Daraa in the south and al-Raqqa in the northeast, killing at least 37 people across the country, activists said.

Five rebels from the Free Syrian Army and three children were among the 37 casualties, the Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said.

Some 200 Syrians fled to Turkey on Saturday, bringing to nearly 16,000 the number who have crossed the border to escape an ongoing government crackdown, Turkish Anatolia news agency said Sunday.

The refugees, including women and children, crossed into Hatay province from Syria's northwest Idlib province, where government troops have launched a crackdown on rebels.

Thousands of grieving Coptic Christians packed St Mark's Cathedral in Cairo on Sunday to bid farewell to Pope Shenuda III, his body on a wooden throne, as the church considered a new head of the anxious community.

Shenuda died on Saturday aged 88 after a long illness, setting in motion the process to elect a new patriarch for the Middle East's largest Christian community.

Missiles fired from the sea slammed into Al-Qaida positions in the southern Yemeni city of Zinjibar on Sunday killing at least 16 suspected militants, a local official said.

He said the heavy shelling began overnight targeting the northeastern suburbs of Zinjibar, which jihadists have controlled since May following fierce fighting with government troops.

Syria said Sunday that two deadly bomb blasts in Damascus were aimed at sabotaging peace efforts, as U.N. experts prepared to join a government-led humanitarian mission to devastated protest hubs.

"Yesterday's explosions were carried out by terrorists supported by foreign powers which finance and arm them," charged Al-Baath newspaper, mouthpiece of Syria's ruling party of the same name.

Israel's intelligence service Mossad agrees with U.S. assessments of Iran's nuclear ambitions, even though Israeli leaders have talked about Tehran's plans to acquire nuclear weapons, The New York Times reported late Saturday.

"Their people ask very hard questions, but Mossad does not disagree with the U.S. on the weapons program," the newspaper quoted an unnamed former senior U.S. intelligence official as saying.