The United Nations is to keep unarmed monitors in Syria despite the escalation of hostilities which led to the suspension of patrols, top U.N. officials said Tuesday.

Major General Robert Mood, head of the U.N. Supervision Mission in Syria (UNSMIS), told the U.N. Security Council the nearly 300 monitors were "morally obliged" to stay despite facing intensive attacks, diplomats said.

The United States on Tuesday added Syria to a blacklist of countries failing to abide by conventions barring human trafficking and slavery, a move which leads to sanctions and cuts in U.S. aid.

"The government of Syria does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so," the 2012 Trafficking in Persons report said.

Egypt's ousted strongman Hosni Mubarak suffered a stroke in prison on Tuesday as authorities mulled transferring him to hospital, state media reported.

Mubarak did not lose consciousness during the stroke, the official MENA news agency reported. It had previously that doctors treated the former president with a defibrillator earlier because his "heart stopped."

Scores of "gullible" Filipinos are being tricked into going to work in Syria each month despite an official ban on travel to the violence-wracked country, the Philippine government said Tuesday.

The Filipinos, mostly women who go and work as maids, are being duped into working in Syria with false promises of high salaries and assurances that they will be safe, Labor Department spokesman Nicon Fameronag told Agence France Presse.

Jordanian MPs on Tuesday endorsed an electoral law that scraps a contested one-person-one-vote system and increases seats for women, as the country prepares to hold polls by the end of this year.

"Under the new law, voters can cast two ballots: one for individual candidates in their governorates and one for political parties or coalitions nationwide," prominent MP Khalil Attieh told AFP.

Unknown attackers set fire to a West Bank mosque and sprayed it with Hebrew graffiti early on Tuesday, in an incident that bore the hallmarks of an attack by extremist Jewish settlers.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is "gravely concerned" about the rising death toll in Syria, a top official said Tuesday ahead of a U.N. Security Council meeting on the escalating conflict.

Ban wants the Security Council to unite to apply "sustained pressure" on Syrian government to apply the peace plan of U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, assistant secretary general Oscar Fernandez Taranco told the 15-nation body.

A previously unknown Islamist group has claimed responsibility for an attack on Israel by militants who crossed from Egypt, according to a video message reported by SITE Intelligence on Tuesday.

The video featured a militant announcing the setting up of a group named the "Mujahideen Shura Council in the Environs of Jerusalem," while other footage showed two gunmen saying they were about to launch the attack, according to the video posted by the US-based monitoring service.

Ousted Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak's last prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, won a presidential election runoff, his campaign team insisted on Tuesday, disputing his Islamist rival's claim of victory.

"We are certain that the next president of Egypt is General Shafiq," his campaign spokesman Ahmed Sarhan told a news conference.

Jordan has tightened border controls to prevent loyalists of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from infiltrating into the kingdom, an official of the opposition Syrian National Council said on Tuesday.

"Jordan used to have an open border policy with the Syrians, but now new regulations prevent some Syrians from entering the kingdom," Amman-based SNC official Nizar Heraki told Agence France Presse.