Egypt's Supreme Constitutional Court on Wednesday accused President Mohammed Morsi of an unjustified attack on its independence when he gave his reasons for issuing a decree that expanded his powers and placed him beyond judicial oversight.

"There was an attack against the court, false information was circulated about it... but the real sadness for its judges was that the president of the republic joined in the attack against the constitutional court," its head Maher al-Beheiry told reporters.

Syrian rebels captured a pilot manning a regime fighter jet downed on Wednesday over Daret Ezza in the northern province of Aleppo, witnesses said.

"Two pilots used parachutes to jump out of the plane after it was hit," a witness told an AFP reporter in the town. "One of them was taken prisoner."

A Saudi diplomat and his bodyguard were killed in broad daylight when their car was raked with gunfire by unidentified assailants in the Yemeni capital on Wednesday, a diplomatic source said.

"Gunmen dressed in the central security forces' uniforms opened fire heavily at the car of the Saudi diplomat in Sanaa, causing it to flip over, killing him and his bodyguard," the source told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Saudi Arabia's grand mufti has slammed popular protests across the region as anti-Islamic, saying they only serve to spread chaos, local media reported on Wednesday.

"These protests are not linked in any way to Islam, which promotes dialogue," Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah al-Sheikh was quoted as saying by Al-Eqtisadiah daily.

The Palestinians head to the United Nations on Thursday in a bid to upgrade their status in a move likely to bring them new global recognition but also harsh repercussions.

President Mahmoud Abbas will personally submit the request seeking to upgrade their rank from an observer entity to that of a non-member observer state before the U.N. General Assembly.

NATO experts on Wednesday began a survey of sites that would serve as suitable locations for the deployment of Patriot missiles along the border with its war-torn neighbor Syria, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported.

Turkey last week asked NATO partners to deploy the surface-to-air missiles along its frontier with Syria after a series of cross-border shellings, including an attack that left five civilians dead.

Egyptian police on Wednesday fired tear gas into Cairo's Tahrir Square, where several hundred protesters spent the night after a mass rally to denounce President Mohamed Morsi's assumption of expanded powers.

Clashes that have been erupting on streets just off Tahrir spilled into the square Wednesday morning, with canisters falling into the crowd forcing protesters to run and sending clouds of tear gas over the tents housing the demonstrators, television images showed.

Simultaneous car bombings killed more than 50 people and left a trail of destruction in a town near Syria's capital on Wednesday.

The explosives-packed cars were detonated at daybreak in a pro-regime neighborhood of the mainly Christian and Druze town of Jaramana, residents, state media and a rights watchdog reported.

Gunmen armed with silenced weapons attacked a house in a town north of Baghdad on Wednesday, killing seven members of a family, including three young children, security officials and a medic said.

Two members of the family, including one of the dead, belonged to the anti-Qaida Sahwa militia force, made up of Sunni tribesmen who resisted the militant group and helped turn the tide of the war in Iraq.

The United States is closely following the drama unfolding in Egypt unsure of President Mohamed Morsi's plans as thousands protested in Cairo against his power grab, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

The situation was evolving, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said, seeking to downplay fears that Islamist Morsi, elected after long-time leader Hosni Mubarak was toppled in 2011, was morphing into an autocrat.