EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton on Sunday urged Israel to annul plans to build 3,000 new settler homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, saying it would be "an obstacle to peace.”

"The European Union has repeatedly stated that all settlement construction is illegal under international law and constitutes an obstacle to peace," Ashton said in a statement.

Five German tourists and two Egyptians were killed in a bus crash near an Egyptian Red Sea resort on Sunday, police officials said.

The tourists died when two buses crashed inside a resort near the popular tourist destination Hurghada, the officials said.

Egyptian judges refused on Sunday to oversee a referendum due in less than two weeks on a controversial new constitution drafted by an Islamist-dominated panel, sharply upping the stakes of a standoff with the Islamist president.

The announcement by the Judges Club, which represents judges nationwide, came after Egypt's top court began an open-ended strike in the face of a mass protest outside the courthouse by supporters of President Mohamed Morsi opposed to their ruling on the legality of the panel that drew up the draft charter.

Fierce clashes erupted overnight as Syrian forces hammered rebel positions around Damascus with artillery and air strikes, as part of an offensive aimed at securing the capital, a watchdog said Sunday.

The fighting broke out in Irbin, a town east of Damascus, as troops also shelled Zabadani to the northwest of the capital and the village of Mliha, leaving many people wounded, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Three women were elected to Kuwait's new parliament as the house now includes as many as 30 new faces following the polls that reportedly saw a 38.8 percent voter turnout.

Three women were elected to the new parliament compared to four in 2009, according to results released by the National Election Commission.

The air corridor over Iraq has emerged as a supply route for weapons for the beleaguered government of Syrian President Bashar Assad, including rockets, antitank missiles, rocket-propelled grenade and mortars, The New York Times reported late Saturday.

Citing unnamed U.S. officials, the newspaper said that to the disappointment of the administration of President Barack Obama, U.S. efforts to persuade the Iraqis to randomly inspect the flights have been largely unsuccessful.

President Mohammed Morsi called on Egyptians on Saturday to vote in a December 15 referendum on the controversial draft constitution at the heart of a political crisis, amid mass Islamist rallies in Cairo.

Morsi made the announcement following a ceremony where he received a copy of the charter from the head of the Islamist-dominated constituent assembly, boycotted by liberals and Christians, that adopted it the day before.

Internet and telephone services resumed in Damascus on Saturday after a three-day blackout, an AFP reporter and state news agency SANA said, as a watchdog said they were up in most parts of Syria.

"Internet is back in Damascus and in parts of Damascus province," the correspondent said, adding that mobile phone lines were also back up.

Fresh clashes erupted on Saturday in the flashpoint Tunisian town of Siliana, amid rising discontent over poor living conditions two years after the revolution, but a deal was struck aimed at satisfying protesters' demands.

In Siliana, where intense clashes have left more than 300 people wounded this week, around 100 stone-throwing youths attacked police, injuring one of them in the head, an AFP journalist reported. The police fired tear gas in response.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Saturday warned of the danger of "ethnic conflict" in Iraq, after negotiations aimed at easing Arab-Kurd tensions in the country's north stalled this week.

"If conflict erupts, it would be unfortunate and painful, and it will be an ethnic conflict" that is "not in the interest of Kurds nor Arabs nor Turkmen," Maliki told a news conference in Baghdad.