President Mahmoud Abbas has warned the Palestinians will take action against Israel through international bodies if peace talks fail, ahead of a visit by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

"The talks are going through great difficulties because of the obstacles created by Israel," Abbas told visiting Arab journalists late Monday at his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

The text of a new constitution that would consolidate the power of the army was handed over to Egypt's interim president Tuesday giving him a month to call a referendum.

The text was given to president Adly Mansour by former Arab League chief Amr Mussa, who headed the 50-member drafting committee which completed its work on Sunday.

Syrian rebels have taken 12 nuns from a convent in the historic town of Maalula to the nearby rebel stronghold of Yabrud, religious officials said on Tuesday.

It was not immediately clear whether the nuns had been kidnapped or merely evacuated for their own safety after rebels seized Maalula from regime forces late Monday following three days of heavy clashes.

Attacks mostly targeting Sunni Arab areas of Baghdad as well as northern and western Iraq killed at least 23 people on Tuesday, the latest in a months-long surge in bloodletting.

The rise in violence, which has killed more than 6,200 people this year, has prompted the authorities to appeal for international help in combating militancy ahead of general elections due in April.

Prominent Egyptian youth leader Ahmed Duma was arrested on Tuesday for participating in a protest, his wife told AFP, the third pro-democracy activist to be detained within a week.

Egyptian authorities have widened their crackdown on protesters since interim president Adly Mansour passed a law on November 24 that bans all unauthorized demonstrations.

Four people were killed on Tuesday in a suicide bombing in central Damascus, hours after jihadists and other rebels seized a historic Christian town north of the capital.

State television said the suicide attack in the Jisr al-Abyad neighborhood killed four and injured 17, and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it appeared to have targeted a government building.

Iraq must make radical changes in how it handles security and its Sunni minority to combat a surge in bloodletting but major steps are unlikely with elections looming, experts say.

With violence at its worst since 2008 and the country appealing for international help in combating militancy, officials have trumpeted operations targeting militants and some concessions to disaffected Sunnis.

Radical Islamist cleric Abu Qatada, deported by Britain in July after a near decade-long legal battle, is to go on trial in Jordan on December 10, judicial sources said Tuesday.

"The state security court has set next Tuesday, December 10, as the date for the first hearing in the trial of Abu Qatada," one source said.

Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, on a tour of Gulf states, will visit the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday, he wrote on his Facebook page.

"Following the visit last week of the UAE's foreign minister to Tehran, tomorrow I will go to the Emirates and will have meetings with the high-ranking officials ... in Dubai and Abu Dhabi," Zarif said in his Tuesday post.

Israel's foreign minister is to hold Washington talks with John Kerry later this week hot on the heels of a new visit to the region by the U.S. top diplomat, an Israeli official said Tuesday.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman will also meet U.N. chief Ban Ki-Moon and address the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, his deputy Zeev Elkin told public radio.