Rebel groups in Syria appeared to have deliberately destroyed or allowed the looting of minority religious sites in the north in November and December 2012, Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday.

"The destruction of religious sites is furthering sectarian fears and compounding the tragedies of the country, with tens of thousands killed," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at the New York-based HRW.

Israel's new government will prioritize domestic socio-economic issues, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged on Wednesday, a day after he won a narrow election victory.

"The Israeli public wants me... to put together a government which will include three big changes internally: a greater sharing of the burden (of military service), affordable housing and changes in the system of government," he said in a brief broadcast address.

Israel's elections, which saw an even split between rightwing and center-left blocs, are unlikely to produce a coalition bent on reviving peace talks, a Palestinian official said Wednesday.

"I don't see a peace coalition or a peace camp emerging now and revitalizing itself," Hanan Ashrawi, a senior official with the Palestine Liberation Organization, told reporters.

More than 650,000 people have fled the conflict in Syria, a top United Nations official said on Wednesday, as Turkey's foreign minister pledged Ankara would continue to accept refugees.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, U.N. aid chief Valerie Amos said the humanitarian situation in Syria was "already catastrophic and clearly getting worse".

Saudi Arabia on Wednesday beheaded an Afghan man convicted of drug trafficking, the Interior Ministry announced.

Mohammed Omar Khan was arrested after "he received a very large amount of hashish," said the statement cited by the official SPA news agency.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday lashed out at the Syrian opposition for its "obsession" with toppling President Bashar Assad which he said was holding up peace efforts in the country.

"For now, everything is running up against the opposition's obsession with toppling Bashar Assad's regime," Lavrov told reporters at his traditional start-of-year news conference.

Five members of one family -- a couple and three children -- were killed when a missile hit their village in Syria's northern province of Aleppo before dawn on Wednesday, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The Britain-based watchdog identified the children as aged seven, nine and 11 and said they were killed in a strike on the village of Abu Taltal near the rebel-held town of Al-Bab.

The second-in-command of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has died, a radical Islamist said in his Twitter account, according to a Wednesday report by the SITE Intelligence group.

The Islamist, identified as Abdullah bin Muhammad, said that Saeed al-Shehri, a Saudi, has died "after a long journey in fighting the Zio-Crusader campaign," according to SITE.

Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu stumbled out of a bruising election Wednesday with a reduced majority, faced with having to curb his hawkish Palestinian policy to woo emergent centrist kingmaker Yair Lapid.

In results that defied expectations, the centrist Yesh Atid became Israel's second strongest party, just nine months after it was created by Lapid, a former journalist, who has overnight become the country's newest political star.

Jordan on Wednesday voted in a parliamentary poll snubbed by Islamists who alleged vote buying and shed doubt on turnout figures, slamming as illegitimate what is likely to be an opposition-free body.

The Independent Election Commission announced a turnout of 47 percent of the registered electorate of 2.3 million before polling stations were due to close at 1600 GMT.