Deadly fighting hit Kirkuk province in north Iraq Tuesday, with 27 people killed in clashes between protesters and security forces and 13 gunmen dying in subsequent revenge attacks on the army, officers said.

The clashes mark the deadliest eruption of violence linked to protests in Sunni areas that began more than four months ago.

A car bomb hit France's embassy in Libya on Tuesday, wounding two French guards and causing extensive damage in the first attack on a foreign mission since militants stormed the U.S. consulate in Benghazi in September.

Libyan Foreign Minister Mohammed Abdel Aziz branded the bombing a "terrorist act", and French President Francois Hollande said Tripoli must act quickly to find the perpetrators and bring them to justice.

Syriac Orthodox Archbishop of Aleppo Youhanna Ibrahim and Greek Orthodox Metropolitan of Aleppo and Iskanderun Boulos al-Yaziji were kidnapped on Monday at the hands of gunmen near the northern Syrian city, Lebanon's state-run National News Agency reported.

Archbishop Ibrahim picked up Archbishop Yaziji in his car from a village on the Turkish border and his deacon was driving the vehicle, NNA said.

The White House said Monday it was appalled by "horrific" reports of a new massacre in Syria after a watchdog group said over 100 people, many of them civilians, were killed in a town near Damascus.

"We are appalled by horrific reports that hundreds of Syrians were killed over the weekend in a Damascus suburb," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

Turkey expressed its dismay on Monday with the way U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry asked Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to delay a visit to the Gaza Strip planned for next month, saying that an experienced diplomat would not do so.

Kerry's statement "is not correct diplomatically", Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc told reporters. "It is up to our government to decide where our prime minister or a Turkish official will go and when."

The Syrian National Coalition named veteran dissident George Sabra as caretaker leader of the main opposition grouping on Monday, following the resignation of Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib.

Sabra "was assigned today to carry out the functions of the head of the Coalition until elections for a new president," one of the Coalition's main constituent groups, the Syrian National Council, said in a statement.

European Union foreign ministers on Monday eased an oil embargo against Syria with the aim of helping rebels fighting President Bashar Assad's regime.

Under the deal, European firms seeking to import Syrian crude or invest in the energy sector would ask for authorization from their government, which in turn would confer with Syria's opposition National Coalition to secure its agreement.

More than 100 people have been found dead in a town near the Syrian capital of Damascus after a five-day operation to retake the town by regime troops, a watchdog said on Monday.

"There are 101 martyrs who have been identified in Jdaidet al-Fadl, which was taken completely by the army on Sunday. The victims are 10 women, three children and 88 men, including 24 rebels," Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told Agence France Presse.

Influential Muslim cleric Youssef al-Qaradawi on Monday urged al-Nusra Front to stay loyal to the mainstream Syrian rebel army, describing its pledge of fealty to al-Qaida as dangerous.

"Al-Nusra Front, which has done very well in its jihad (holy war) against the tyrant regime of Damascus, should ... remain within the ranks of the Free (Syrian) Army, to maintain unity," the International Union of Muslim Scholars which he heads said in a statement.

Kuwait's appeals court on Monday granted opposition leader Musallem al-Barrak bail as it began examining his five-year jail term for insulting the emir, a lawyer said.

Former MP Barrak appeared in court, although he had refused to turn himself in to police over the past week during which he insisted on seeing the original arrest warrant.