The Gaza branch of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party has started celebrations of its 48th anniversary in the Hamas-ruled territory, a local leader said on Tuesday.

"Yesterday we lit the light starting the anniversary of the revolution," Atef Abu Seif told AFP.

Suspected Jewish extremists have torched a vehicle in a West Bank village and scrawled racist graffiti on a nearby wall, Palestinians and Israelis said Tuesday.

The pickup truck was totally destroyed, and a tractor belonging to the same owner was damaged by flames in the incident at Beit Ummar village, north of the city Hebron.

Egyptian prosecutors were interrogating on Tuesday an Israeli man in the Red Sea port of Nuweiba who is suspected of espionage, a judicial source said.

"An Israel man was arrested on Monday in Taba on suspicion of espionage. He was remanded today in police custody for four days pending investigation," the source said.

The international airport in Syria's second city of Aleppo has been temporarily closed due to repeated attacks by rebel fighters, an airport official said on Tuesday.

"There have been continued attempts by opposition militants to target civilian aircraft, which could cause a humanitarian disaster," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

UAE security forces have arrested more than 10 people linked to Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood who recruited members in the Gulf state, a newspaper reported on Tuesday.

"United Arab Emirates security services have arrested a cell of more than 10 people belonging to the leadership of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood," Al-Khaleej reported, quoting what it said was an informed source.

Deadly violence in Iraq dropped to near its lowest levels of 2012 in December, figures compiled by Agence France Presse showed on Tuesday, despite a wave of attacks a day earlier which killed 23 people.

Overall, 139 people were killed across the country last month, including 40 policemen and 15 soldiers, and 347 others were wounded, according to the data based on reports from security and medical officials.

The U.S. State Department made a "grievous mistake" in refusing to shut down its mission in Benghazi, Libya, despite the deteriorating security situation in the country, a Senate report said Monday.

The diplomatic post was kept open "despite the inability of the Libyan government to fulfill its duties to secure the facility and the increasingly dangerous threat environment that American intelligence described," U.S. lawmakers concluded.

Nearly 90 percent of those who have died in Syria's 21-month conflict were killed in 2012, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Monday.

More than 45,000 people have been killed since the conflict broke out in March 2011, but 39,362 of those perished during the past 12 months, the majority civilians, said the Britain-based watchdog.

Nearly 300 Palestinians staged a demonstration in the northern West Bank town of Nablus Monday, protesting against the economic situation and against Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad.

An Agence France Presse correspondent said the protest came after Fayyad on Sunday announced that the Palestinian Authority would as of 2013 enforce the payment of electricity bills by refugee camp residents, who have so far not had to pay them.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has again spoken out against the use of pressure to impose Islamic values on people, especially university candidates, media reported on Monday.

"You cannot impose things by issuing decrees and directives -- a choice imposed by force has no value whatsoever," Ahmadinejad said in a speech on Sunday.