Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday "it is possible" the United States would meet with a newly formed Syrian rebel alliance that wants to replace the regime with an Islamic state.

"The United States has not met yet to date with the Islamic Front. There has not been a discussion," he told a news conference while visiting the Philippines.

Militants killed at least eight Shiite pilgrims in and around Baghdad on Tuesday, after car bombs targeted others the day before, Iraqi security officials said.

A suicide bomber detonated explosives among pilgrims walking south of Baghdad, killing four, while militants in a car threw hand grenades at pilgrims in the capital, killing at least four others.

The world's chemical watchdog was meeting Tuesday to agree exactly how Syria's arsenal will be destroyed outside the country, with the plan facing potential delays.

The hectic pace of the U.N.-backed plan to rid Syria of its entire chemical weapons stockpile by mid-2014 has slowed recently amid security problems in the war-ravaged country.

Two Syrian refugee children and their father died of their injuries on Tuesday after a cooking gas cylinder exploded in their tent in a camp in Jordan, officials said.

The explosion happened in the Zaatari camp, 10 kilometers (six miles) east of the northern city of Mafraq, which is home to more than 100,000 refugees, a security official said.

Saudi authorities on Tuesday beheaded a Syrian man convicted of smuggling drugs to the ultra-conservative kingdom, the interior ministry said.

Syrian national Hasan Mahmud al-Bash was executed in the northern province of Jawf, the ministry said in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency.

The long-delayed "Geneva II" peace conference for Syria will open in the Swiss lakeside town of Montreux because of a lack of hotel space in Geneva, the United Nations said Tuesday.

"The international conference on Syria... will be held due to logistical reasons... in Montreux," said Khawal Mattar, spokeswoman for U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who is trying to organize the conference.

Egypt's military has arrested a jihadist suspected of involvement in an ambush that killed 16 Egyptian soldiers near the border with Israel last year, an army spokesman said Tuesday.

Silmi Mohammed Masbah was arrested Monday in Sinai and is allegedly a member of Ansar Beit al-Maqdis -- an Al-Qaida-inspired militant group operating in the restive peninsula -- said military spokesman Colonel Ahmed Ali.

Syrian aircraft pounded rebel-held areas of Aleppo for a third day Tuesday, with hospitals reportedly overwhelmed as more than 100 people have been killed in the bombing.

Two children were among at least 20 people killed in Aleppo on Tuesday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group that relies on activists and other witnesses on the ground in Syria.

Tunisians marked the third anniversary of the self-immolation of a young street vendor that sparked the first Arab Spring uprising, although anti-government protests failed to draw large crowds on Tuesday.

Around 1,000 unionists and left-wing opposition activists gathered in Sidi Bouzid, the impoverished central town where Mohammed Bouazizi staged his iconic protest on December 17, 2011, for a demonstration against the lack of progress since the revolution.

Yemen's parliament has voted for a ban on drone strikes, but experts said Monday lawmakers have limited powers and their vote is unlikely to impact Washington's bid to crush al-Qaida militants.

The United States operates all unmanned aircraft flying over Yemen in support of Sanaa's attempts to break al-Qaida, and intensified strikes this year have killed dozens of militants.