MUSCAT: Iranians are working alongside Hezbollah fighters to back Syrian troops battling to retake the rebel stronghold of Qusayr amid fears of a civilian massacre, a US official said Tuesday.

"It is the most visible effort we have seen by Hezbollah to engage directly in the fighting in Syria as a foreign force, and we understand there are also Iranians up there," a senior State Department official told reporters.

His information was based on reports from commanders of the rebel Free Syrian Army, but he was unable to give any estimates of how many Hezbollah fighters or Iranians were involved, and what exact role the Iranians were playing.

"I don't know that they are directly involved in the fighting, but I don't think the people that I'm talking to know that themselves," the official told reporters travelling with US Secretary of State John Kerry.

"This is an important thing to note -- the direct implication of foreigners on Syrian soil for the regime," he cautioned on a conference call in Muscat.

Many opposition commanders had reported that forces from the powerful Lebanese movement Hezbollah "are directly engaged in fighting literally on the streets.

They say that their men... are directly fighting against Hezbollah commanders." "Iran's role and Hezbollah's role have grown substantially over the last couple of months," he warned ahead of a Friends of Syria meeting to be held in Jordan on Wednesday.

Observers have alleged that Hezbollah fighters were leading the battle for Qusayr in Homs province, three days after the Syrian regime began an assault to regain control of the town.

The town is a key strategic prize as it sits on the main highway between Damascus and the Mediterranean coast, and also controls rebel supply routes from the mainly Sunni Muslim port of Tripoli in neighbouring Lebanon.

"The world is watching this and we are watching this and we will know if they commit massacres.. and we will hold them accountable," the US official warned the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The Syrian opposition had voiced concerns that "when regime forces do go into Qusayr, if they do capture it, that there will be retaliation against the civilian population," he added, stressing "there are still thousands of civilians in the city."

The five were executed in the southwestern town of Jizan, bringing the number of people executed in the kingdom this year to 46.

A witness in Jizan told that the five men were displayed in public near a university.

In a picture on microblogging website Twitter, five men are seen hanging from a rope tied to their waists on a horizontal bar between two cranes. It was unclear if they were beheaded or shot.

The ministry said that Khaled, Adel and Qassem Saraa as well as Saif Ali al-Sahari and Khaled Showie al-Sahari had formed a gang which committed “several crimes in various regions in the kingdom and robbed stores.”

The five had killed Ahmed Haroubi, a Saudi, by beating him up and strangling him, it said.

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“Both men died while descending from the summit on Monday,” an official with the tourism ministry told AFP from Everest Base Camp.

Sung Ho-Seo, 34, of South Korea was attempting the climb without supplementary oxygen and died on his way down the mountain.

Mohammed Hossain, 35, from Bangladesh, died in his tent a few hours after successfully climbing the summit.

“The exact cause of death is unknown, but altitude played a part,” said the official, Gyanendra Shrestha, adding that the bodies would not be recovered until after the summit season ended so as not to interrupt other climbers.

Both men perished in the “death zone” — above 8,000 metres, notorious for its difficult terrain and thin air.

Five other climbers have died on the 8,848-metre (29,029-foot) mountain this season.

Early in the season Mingmar Sherpa, 47, a member of an elite team known as the “icefall doctors” who set up climbing routes, plunged to his death.

DaRita Sherpa, 47, died from what is believed to have been cardiac arrest earlier this month.

Commercial guide Lobsang Sherpa, 22, also plunged to his death. A 50-year-old Russian climber, Alex Bolotov, was found dead near the famed Khumbu Icefall crevasse on May 15.

Namgyal Sherpa, who had led expeditions to clear garbage and bodies from Everest, died May 16 while descending from his tenth successful summit.

Some 300 people have perished trying to reach the summit during the last six decades.

The bodies of some of them remain on the mountain.

May is considered the best time for climbing in the Nepalese Himalayas because of mild weather and some 300 people have reached the top of Everest so far this year.

But a brawl that erupted last month between three European climbers and Nepalese guides on the mountain cast a shadow over this year’s season, which marks the 60th anniversary of the maiden ascent by Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary. (AFP)

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TIKRIT: Four bombings in northern Iraq killed five people and wounded 69 on Tuesday, officials said, the latest in a spate of violence that has killed more than 370 people so far this month.

Two car bombs exploded in a Turkmen Shiite area of Tuz Khurmatu, a town in Salaheddin province, killing three people, wounding 44 and causing extensive damage to 10 houses, police and a doctor said.

And two roadside bombs detonated in a sheep market in the city of Kirkuk, killing two people and wounding 25, other officials said.

Both Tuz Khurmatu and Kirkuk are part of a swathe of territory that Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region wants to incorporate over the strong objections of the federal government -- a dispute diplomats and officials say is a major threat to the country's long-term stability.

The bombings came a day after attacks killed more than 60 people across Iraq, which has been hit by a wave of violence in which 371 people have died so far this month, according to a tally of figures given by officials.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has announced plans to overhaul the country's security strategy and personnel, and that the matter would be discussed at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

KABUL: An Afghan official says a powerful roadside bomb has killed six policemen in the country's west.

The officers' vehicle hit the explosives planted in the road they were driving on Tuesday morning in Herat province.

District Police Chief Sher Agha says the explosion was so strong that the police truck was completely destroyed in the blast in Obey district. He says there were no survivors.

The policemen were guards of Salma dam project and were on their way to Herat city. Insurgents often use makeshift land mines to target both Afghan government officials and international forces in Afghanistan. The explosives often kill civilians as well.

MOSCOW: A 6.0-magnitude earthquake struck Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula early Tuesday followed by a series of strong after-shocks, the US Geological Survey said.

The first quake struck at a depth of 33 kilometres (20 miles) at 0155 GMT, 136 kilometres east-southeast of the Russian city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, the USGS reported. It was followed by three after-shocks, the strongest of which measured 5.9 magnitude at a depth of 44 kilometres, it added.

The Kamchatka branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences' geophysics service said on its website that the quake's magnitude measured 6.1, followed by aftershocks with a magnitude of up to 6.0.

The earthquake did not cause any casualties, the Kamchatka branch of the Emergency Situations ministry said in a statement. "There is no risk of a tsunami. There are no casualties or damage." The Kamchatka peninsula is where the Pacific tectonic plate meets part of the North American one, making the region one of the most seismically active in the world.

WASHINGTON: A powerful tornado swept through an Oklahoma City suburb on Monday, tearing down blocks of homes, two schools and leaving at least 91 people dead, including 20 children, local officials said.

The state medical examiner's office released the latest death toll but the number was climbing rapidly, as emergency crews combed through smashed homes and the collapsed remains of an elementary school in Moore, Oklahoma.

Stunned weather forecasters reported a two-mile (three-kilometer) wide swath of vicious winds, and television news helicopters tracked a dark funnel plowing through densely-packed suburbs.

"We've had a massive tornado, a huge one that has passed through this community," Oklahoma's Governor Mary Fallin told a news conference.

"We know there are a lot of injuries. We know we've lost a tremendous amount of structures throughout this community and throughout the state," she said, as the Moore police chief urged people to leave the area.

"There are a lot of safety issues, gas lines, power lines, things of that nature, that we have to take into consideration and there's just not much else that can be done there at this time," police chief Jerry Sillings said.

The dead included at least 20 children, most of them under the age of 12, Amy Elliott, of the state medical examiner's office, told AFP. She later told CNN in a televised interview that the total death toll had risen to 91.

CNN reported that at least 145 people had been hospitalized.

Reporters for local broadcaster KFOR-TV saw children as young as nine being pulled out of the Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, a residential community of 55,000 just south of Oklahoma's state capital.

Anxious parents were being kept at a distance while search-and-rescue workers scrambled to free the students.

A second elementary school, Briarwood, was also hit but did not appear to have sustained casualties.

From its news helicopter, KFOR's cameras captured scenes of widespread destruction, with street after street of single-story homes in Moore stripped of their roofs and cars piled atop each other like toys.

Utility lines were down and gas lines exposed, triggering localized fires. The Moore Medical Center was evacuated after it sustained damage, and state authorities called out the National Guard to help rescue efforts.

US President Barack Obama meanwhile declared a "major disaster" in Oklahoma and ordered federal aid to supplement local recovery efforts.

The accident happened on May 14 at Freeport-McMoRan’s Grasberg, one of the world’s biggest gold and copper mines in mountainous, remote Papua province, and 10 workers were rescued alive soon afterwards.

Search teams pulled another four bodies out of the rubble overnight, taking the confirmed toll to 21, according to a statement from Freeport’s Indonesian subsidiary.

Rescue efforts have been slow due to the unstable situation at the tunnel, with rocks continuing to fall from the roof.

Freeport-McMoRan president and chief executive Richard Adkerson arrived on site at the weekend to visit the injured workers and the families of those still buried, and hundreds have held prayer ceremonies in Papua and Jakarta.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said on Monday that the government would “carry out a thorough investigation into the cause of the disaster, the technological factors, and whether there was any negligence”.

Operations have been halted at the mine since last week as a mark of respect for those affected by the accident.

Workers demanding safer conditions were blocking a road leading to the facility for a seventh day, using heavy machinery, such as dump trucks, and planks of wood.

The tunnel was part of an underground training facility, not one of the mining areas. The 38 people inside at the time of the accident were direct employees and contract workers undergoing safety training.

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MOORE: Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin says "hearts are broken" for parents wondering about the fate of their children after a tornado devastated suburban Oklahoma City and officials say the search and rescue effort will continue throughout the night.

Fallin told a Monday news conference that a center for those seeking loved ones has been set up at a church in Moore, where an afternoon tornado flattened entire neighborhoods and destroyed an elementary school with a direct hit. She says responders are working as quickly as they can to sort through the rubble.

Authorities who joined Fallin say search and rescue efforts are ongoing and will continue overnight.

The governor says the state will spare no resource in the tornado recovery and will consider using Oklahoma's rainy day fund in the effort.

The Oklahoma Medical Examiner's Office says a growing death toll from a massive tornado that struck outside Oklahoma City on Monday afternoon now stands at 51. Spokeswoman Amy Elliott says the death toll is again expected to rise. Elliott says children are among those killed by the storm.

Integris Southwest Medical Center spokeswoman Brooke Cayot (KAY'-ot) said 10 of 37 patients being treated at that facility Monday are listed in critical condition. Twelve are in serious and 15 others are listed in fair or good condition.

Five of the patients are children, including two who came from the Plaza Towers Elementary School, where an Associated Press photographer saw several children being pulled from the rubble. Cayot could not confirm the children's conditions.

Spokesman Scott Coppenbarger says another 20 patients of various ages are being treated at OU Medical Center. He says eight of them are children.

Several children have been pulled out of the rubble alive at a school in an Oklahoma City suburb.

An Associated Press photographer saw several children being pulled out of what was left of the Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Okla., on Monday after a massive tornado hit the region.

Rescue workers lifted children from the rubble before they were passed down a human chain and taken to a triage center set up in the school's parking lot.

The school is southwest of Oklahoma City. Its roof appears mangled and the walls had fallen in or had collapsed.

The National Weather Service said the tornado's preliminary classification was an EF-4, with winds up to 200 mph.

Authorities say emergency crews are working to rescue people trapped in Moore, which is southwest of Oklahoma City.

Oklahoma City Police Capt. Dexter Nelson said emergency crews are trying to reach the affected areas. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

The suburb of Moore was hit hard by a tornado in 1999. The storm had the highest winds ever recorded near the earth's surface.

A mix of volunteers and first responders are combing through debris in an Oklahoma City suburb looking for survivors.

The city of Moore, Okla., was hit by a mile-wide tornado on Monday afternoon.

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama's administration has decided to give the Pentagon control of some drone operations against terrorism suspects overseas that are currently run by the CIA, several US government sources said on Monday.

Obama has pledged more transparency on controversial counterterrorism programs, and giving the Pentagon the responsibility for part of the drone program could open it to greater congressional oversight.

Obama will make a speech on Thursday at the National Defense University in Washington that will include discussion of the government's use of drones as a counterterrorism tool. It is unclear whether he will announce the drone program shift in that speech or separately.

Four US government sources told Reuters that the decision had been made to shift the CIA's drone operations to the Pentagon, and some of them said it would occur in stages.

Drone strikes in Yemen, where the US military already conducts operations with Yemeni forces, would be run by the armed forces, officials said.

But for the time-being US drone strikes in Pakistan would continue to be conducted by the CIA to keep the program covert, several sources said.

Ultimately, however, the administration's goal would be to transfer the Pakistan drone operations to the military, one US official said on condition of anonymity.

The internal debate within the administration about whether to switch control of drone strikes to the military has been going on for months. Obama is under heightened pressure to show that his administration is transparent, after a series of scandals about civil liberties and allegations of government overreach broke last week.

A White House National Security Council spokeswoman and a CIA spokeswoman each declined comment.