French freelance reporter Pierre Torres, who filed copy for several media networks including Agence France Presse, was wounded in Aleppo on Sunday as Syrian troops pushed an assault on rebels, a colleague said.

Torres, 28, was hit by a bullet in the shoulder, according to a Spanish freelance journalist who has seen his injury.

Bombings in Iraq killed six people on Sunday, including two policemen, and wounded 21 others, security and medical officials said.

A car bomb in a market in al-Muqdadiyah, 90 kilometers (55 miles) northeast of Baghdad, killed four people and wounded 13 others, a local police officer and a doctor said.

The United Nations said Sunday that 200,000 people have fled the Syrian city of Aleppo in two days as President Bashar Assad's forces step up their assault.

U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos said in a statement that an unknown number of people are trapped in the city and appealed for safe access to Aleppo for aid groups.

U.S. presidential hopeful Mitt Romney's endorsement of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is "harmful" to U.S. interests in the Middle East, a senior Palestinian official said on Sunday.

"Romney's declarations are harmful to American interests in our region, and they harm peace, security and stability," Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat told Agence France Presse.

Syria's Muslim Brotherhood denounced on Sunday President Bashar Assad, his allies Iran and Russia, and the international community for its "silence" and failure to protect civilians.

In a statement issued amid raging battles in Syria's commercial capital Aleppo, the influential Islamist movement said Assad was "legally and morally responsible for the death of every victim in Syria."

Gunmen loyal to ousted Yemeni ruler Ali Abdullah Saleh on Sunday seized a security building near the Interior Ministry in the capital for a few hours before vacating it, a security official said.

The official said the gunmen were sent by a former security official and a relative of Saleh. After taking over the building in Sanaa, they blocked off the airport highway where it is located.

Syrian troops on Sunday killed two men as they tried to cross the border into neighboring Jordan, a local official said, as Syria’s state news agency said border guards killed a large number of "terrorists" who attempted to cross into Syria from Turkey.

"At least two men were shot dead by the Syrian army early this morning when they tried to cross the border into the kingdom, along with hundreds of Syrians," Zayed Hammad, head of the Ketab and Sunna Society, which provides aid to more than 50,000 Syrian refugees, told Agence France Presse.

Almost half of those killed in Syria since the outbreak of the anti-regime revolt in March 2011 have died since a failed U.N.-Arab League truce was due to come into force, a monitoring group said on Sunday.

"Some 45 percent of those killed in Syria have been killed since April 12," said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Unknown gunmen kidnapped on Sunday an Italian embassy security agent in Sanaa, a Western diplomat and a Yemeni security official said.

The man was taken hostage from a street close to the mission in Hadda neighborhood in southwestern Sanaa, the diplomat said, requesting anonymity.

Libya's General National Congress, which will become the first elected body to rule the oil-rich nation after Moammar Gadhafi’s ouster, is due to take power early August, an official said Sunday.

"August 8 is expected to be the date on which power is transferred from the National Transitional Council to the General National Congress," said Othman Ben Sassi, a member of the outgoing NTC.