A Syrian government delegation led by Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Muqdad on Thursday began talks at the Russian foreign ministry on the crisis in the country, Russian news agencies said.

The delegation was at the foreign ministry in Moscow, the reports said, without giving further details about the nature of the talks, amid speculation of a new Russia-U.S. initiative to end the crisis.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held talks with Jordan's King Abdullah II in Amman recently to discuss violence in Syria and the country's chemical weapons stock, Israeli media said Thursday.

Public radio, as well as several local newspapers, said Israeli and Jordanian officials had confirmed the meeting, which was first reported in the al-Quds al-Arabi daily on Wednesday.

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi on Wednesday hailed an Islamist-backed charter he pushed through despite fierce opposition protests as "a new dawn" for his country, and said he would now tackle a teetering economy.

In a televised national address, Morsi said he would reshuffle his government and renewed an offer of dialogue with the largely secular opposition.

The United Nations on Wednesday predicted the number of Syrian refugees in neighboring countries will double to 1.1 million by June next year if the country's war is not ended.

There are now more than 540,000 registered refugees in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Egypt, according to the latest U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) report on Syria.

More than 1,000 Syrians crossed into Turkey in the last 24 hours after the Syrian regime attacked a bakery in the town of Halfeya, a Turkish foreign ministry official said on Wednesday.

"1,100 Syrians mostly women and children fled to Turkey in the last 24 hours through a border crossing in the town of Reyhanli," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Syria peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi will hold talks in Moscow on Saturday following consultations with President Bashar Assad's regime in Damascus, Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov told ITAR-TASS on Wednesday.

The Russian foreign ministry said Brahimi himself had requested the meeting as he pursues what so far have been fruitless efforts to negotiate an end to 21 months of violence that have claimed more than 45,000 lives.

The worst rains to hit Baghdad in 30 years left four people dead and many of the Iraqi capital's residents struggling to cope with heavy flooding on Wednesday as the government declared a national holiday.

Patients reported long and difficult journeys to hospitals, shopkeepers complained of a lack of business and several roads were immersed in water, in some cases as much as waist-high.

UAE authorities on Wednesday announced busting a cell of Saudi and Emirati members plotting "terror" attacks in the two countries and other states.

The suspects "imported material and equipment with the aim of committing terror acts," said an official statement on WAM state news agency. The arrests came after coordination between security authorities in the two Gulf states.

Turkey will provide neighboring Syria with electricity if asked but the deteriorating situation there makes such a move unlikely, the energy minister said on Wednesday.

"We'll give electricity to Syria if they want," Taner Yildiz was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency.

A Syrian military police chief who defected from the regime of President Bashar Assad is in Turkey, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported on Wednesday.

General Abdel Aziz Jassem al-Shallal, commander of the Syrian military police, crossed into Turkey on Wednesday via the Cilvegozu border crossing in the town of Reyhanli, Anatolia said.