U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel arrived in the Saudi Arabia Tuesday, the first leg of a regional tour focusing on Iran's nuclear program and Syria's civil war.

Hagel will hold talks with Saudi officials and on Wednesday he will meet Gulf Cooperation Council defense ministers in the first US-GCC meeting of its kind since 2008.

The Italian navy on Tuesday said 17 bodies had been recovered and 206 people rescued by patrol boats and merchant ships from a migrant shipwreck in international waters between Libya and Italy.

"There were 207 survivors rescued yesterday... Seventeen bodies have been recovered so far," the navy said in a statement, increasing a previous toll of 14 victims following the incident on Monday.

The interior minister says police have arrested six people in northeastern France in a roundup of suspected jihadists who traveled to fight in Syria's civil war.

The sweep around dawn Tuesday in Strasbourg comes weeks after authorities announced a new push to stop French militants from traveling to Syria.

Rush hour bombs mostly targeting Shiite areas of Baghdad killed 25 people on Tuesday in the first major wave of attacks in the capital since a general election last month.

The apparently coordinated blasts struck as Iraq's Shiite majority marked the birth of a venerated figure in their faith, and came as officials tallied votes from the April 30 election amid a protracted surge in bloodshed that has killed more than 3,300 people this year.

Evidence "strongly suggests" Syria's government has used chlorine gas on three towns in mid-April in violation of the chemical weapons treaty Damascus joined last year, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday.

"Evidence strongly suggests that Syrian government helicopters dropped barrel bombs embedded with cylinders of chlorine gas on three towns in northern Syria in mid-April 2014," HRW said.

Heavy fighting broke out Monday between rival jihadi groups in an oil-rich eastern Syrian province bordering Iraq, forcing many residents to flee, activists said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the fighting concentrated on the eastern parts of Deir el-Zour province. An activist based in the province who goes by the name of Abdul-Aziz Sheik said many tribesmen have joined the battle on the side of the Syrian al-Qaida affiliate known as the Nusra Front, which is fighting an al-Qaida breakaway group, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

The U.N. Security Council should impose a ceasefire to end the bloodshed in Syria, Qatar's foreign minister said Monday, accusing the Damascus regime of using poison gas against rebel-held areas.

"It is imperative that the U.N. Security Council assume its responsibilities and force the implementation of its resolutions for a ceasefire, to protect the Syrian people from killing and displacement," Khalid al-Attiyah told participants in the Doha Forum.

The Syrian army on Monday opened fire at two Lebanese citizens who were trying to cross into Syria via an illegal border crossing in northern Lebanon.

“Troops from the regular Syrian army opened fire at Khaled al-Mheimed and a man from the al-Ouwaishi family, who are both Lebanese from the Wadi Khaled region,” Lebanon's National News Agency reported.

Syria's most extreme jihadist faction issued a ban Monday on mannequins in shop displays and the sale of women's underwear to male customers, a monitoring group said.

The decision by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in their northern stronghold of Raqa also bans men and women shopping together unless he is her husband, father or brother, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The foreign ministry said Monday that France and Germany intend to prevent Syrians living in their countries from voting in Syria's presidential election, expected to return President Bashar Assad to power.

Germany and France are "preventing Syrians living in their territory from voting", the foreign ministry said.