Security forces have killed another three people and arrested so many that Syria has become a "huge prison," activists said on Tuesday, as the crackdown on dissent shows no signs of easing.

Two men and a woman were shot dead on Monday in separate incidents in and around the flashpoint central city of Homs and in the northwestern city of Idlib, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Twelve suspected al-Qaida militants were killed in overnight bombings and clashes near Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan province in south Yemen, a military officer and a local official said on Tuesday.

"The Yemeni air force carried out a number of strikes on al-Khamila south of Zinjibar where al-Qaida members were hiding ... killing seven and wounding others," the military officer said, adding that various pieces of equipment belonging to the jihadists were also destroyed.

Palestinian premier Salam Fayyad will urge Arab nations to deliver pledged aid at a meeting of the Arab League on Tuesday to discuss the Palestinian Authority's financial crisis.

Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki told Agence France Presse that the meeting at the Arab League's Cairo headquarters had been convened at the request of president Mahmud Abbas.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi will visit Moscow at the invitation of his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov to discuss Tehran's controversial nuclear drive, an official said on Tuesday.

"Regarding Mr. Lavrov's invitation to Mr. Salehi ... the topics of discussion will be elevating bilateral relations, studying regional and international developments," Foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told a media conference.

Gaza's Hamas rulers on Tuesday executed two Palestinians convicted of collaboration with Israel, the interior ministry said in a statement.

It was the second time this year that the Islamist movement had carried out an execution of someone accused of 'collaborating' with the Israelis.

German diplomats have met with Syrian opposition figures in Damascus and Berlin in recent weeks as the EU demands an end to a crackdown on protesters, a foreign ministry spokesman said Monday.

The spokesman, Martin Schaefer, said that Berlin's coordinator for Middle East policy, Boris Ruge, had held talks with opposition members as well as Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem on two occasions.

A Cairo court on Monday decided to merge the trials of former president Hosni Mubarak and ex-interior minister Habib al-Adly, both accused of killing protesters during an uprising that toppled the regime.

The decision came as former prime minister Ahmed Nazif was charged in a corruption case by military prosecutors, in the first case of a former regime official facing military justice.

Syrian armed forces have arrested several people after demonstrations against President Bashar al-Assad's regime were held across Damascus, rights activists said on Monday.

"The army on Sunday arrested nine people in the district of Hajar al-Aswad and many others in Sahnaya," a suburb south of Damascus, said Rami Abdul Rahman, head of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Israel is weighing the possibility of cancelling the landmark Oslo accords with the Palestinians in response to their plan to seek United Nations membership, the daily Haaretz said on Monday.

Citing unnamed Israeli officials, the newspaper reported that Yaakov Amidror, the head of Israel's National Security Council (NSC), was examining the potential cancellation as one of a number of responses to the U.N. bid.

Hundreds of protesters hurled stones at a convoy of vans taking Egypt's once-feared interior minister Habib al-Adly from court on Monday after a judge delayed his murder trial.

The judge postponed until August 3 the trial of Adly, who appeared in the dock in his first trial for allegedly ordering the killing of protesters during an uprising that toppled former president Hosni Mubarak.