Al-Qaida's branch in Syria will not accept any results that come from peace talks next month to end the civil war, its chief said in an Al-Jazeera television interview to be aired Thursday.

"We will not recognize any results that come out of the Geneva 2 conference," Al-Jazeera's website quoted Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani, the head of Al-Nusra Front, as saying.

Syrian warplanes pounded northern Aleppo for a fifth consecutive day Thursday, unleashing their firepower against several rebel-held villages in the province, activists and a monitoring group said.

The latest attacks have killed at least 10 people in just two of the targeted villages, among them four women and two children, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Syrian government forces are waging a systematic campaign of enforced disappearances to terrorize the population, amounting to a crime against humanity, a U.N.-mandated probe said Thursday.

"Enforced disappearances are perpetrated as part of a widespread campaign of terror against the civilian population," the Independent International Commission of Inquiry said in a report.

Police in Egypt said an Islamist militant blew himself up in his hideout to escape arrest on Thursday, wounding an officer in the process.

The militant had been holed up in a north Cairo apartment when police raided the building and he set off the explosives when surrounded, police said.

The Palestinians on Thursday accused Israel of a "dangerous escalation" after the army killed two people in the West Bank, calling the violence a deliberate attempt to scupper peace talks.

"This dangerous Israeli escalation aims to thwart American and international efforts to move forward with the peace process, and leads the negotiations to a dead end," presidential spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina said in a statement published by the official WAFA news agency.

Three suicide bombers detonated explosives belts among Shiite pilgrims in Iraq on Thursday, killing at least 36 people, while militants shot dead a family of five, officials said.

The deadliest attack hit the Dura area of south Baghdad, where a bomber targeted pilgrims at a tent where they are served food and drinks on their way to the shrine city of Karbala, killing at least 20 people and wounding at least 40.

Egyptian courts acquitted Ahmed Shafiq, a former premier and presidential candidate, of corruption charges on Thursday, paving the way for his return more than a year after he fled abroad.

The courts also acquitted the two sons of ousted strongman Hosni Mubarak, whom he served under, Alaa and Gamal, but they still face other corruption trials.

With Iraqi President Jalal Talabani in Germany for treatment, the country has been without a key mediator during a disastrous year of political conflict and surging violence.

Talabani, a veteran Kurdish leader who is now 80, left Iraq for treatment on December 20 last year after suffering a stroke two days before, and has yet to return.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to continue "developing" settlements following reports of U.S. pressure ahead of a fresh round of Palestinian prisoner releases due later this month.

"We will not stop, even for a moment, building our country and becoming stronger, and developing... the settlement enterprise," he told members of his rightwing Likud faction in remarks broadcast on army radio on Thursday.

Around 60 nations, including Lebanon, have been invited to a second donors conference for Syria in a bid to raise an unprecedented $6.5 billion in humanitarian aid, a U.N. official said Thursday.

The United Nations on Monday appealed for a record $12.9 billion in global emergency aid, half of which is for victims of Syria's war, which has killed an estimated 126,000 people and displaced millions more both within the country and across its borders.