Yemeni security forces on Monday detained a man believed to be an American who appeared on a list of wanted al-Qaida suspects, a security official told Agence France Presse.

The suspect was detained in Ataq, the capital of Shabwa province, a jihadist stronghold in the south of Yemen, the official said.

Abdel Basset Sayda, the head of the main opposition Syrian National Council, entered the country on Monday for the first time since assuming his post in June, rebel sources said.

Sayda paid a visit to the town of Bab al-Hawa in the northwestern province of Idlib, on the border with Turkey, where he met several leaders of the rebel Free Syrian Army, the sources said.

Violence across Syria has killed more than 32,000 people, most of them civilians, since the outbreak of an anti-regime revolt in March last year, a monitoring group said.

Some 1,000 people have been killed in the past week alone, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, as violence escalates across the country.

Israel has deployed Patriot anti-missile batteries near the northern port city of Haifa, Israeli media reported Monday, just two days after an unidentified drone infiltrated the country's airspace.

A military spokeswoman confirmed to Agence France Presse that the U.S.-made missiles, which can shoot down drones, had been stationed near Haifa but refused to confirm the move was related to the Saturday infiltration.

Syrian rebels holding dozens of Iranian hostages since August and who threatened to execute them by Sunday have temporarily postponed their killing, a Free Syrian Army spokesman told Agence France Presse.

"Contact has been established with the Turkish authorities as part of indirect negotiations between the FSA and the Syrian and Iranian regimes," said Ahmed al-Khatib, spokesman for the FSA's Military Council in Damascus province.

Police said unknown assailants on Monday threw stones, bottles and garbage at the door of a church in Jerusalem, in the third attack against Christian sites in Israel in recent weeks.

Police spokeswoman Luba Samri told Agence France Presse nobody was injured in the attack on the Romanian Orthodox church, St. George's, but that the door was damaged. Police were investigating, she added.

Barack Obama has "failed to lead" in the Middle East and the strained ties between his White House and Israel have emboldened Iran, presidential challenger Mitt Romney declared Monday.

In a major foreign policy speech, Romney warned the president's dithering had increased instability in a region clamoring for U.S. leadership and left both the United States and its Middle East allies less safe than they were.

A draft Egyptian constitution heavily influenced by Islamist conservatives contains articles that could pose a serious threat to basic human rights in post-Mubarak Egypt, Human Rights Watch said on Monday.

A 100-strong panel picked in June and headed by senior judge Hossam al-Ghariani has been tasked with drafting the new constitution, after the old charter was suspended following the 2011 uprising which toppled Hosni Mubarak.

An Algerian court on Monday handed Yaseen Zaid, a human rights activist, a suspended six-month prison sentence and fined him $130 for verbally assaulting policemen, his lawyers said.

"The judge gave Yaseen Zaid a suspended six-month prison sentence and a fine of 10,000 Algerian dinars ($130, 100 euros)," Amine Sidhoum, a member of his legal team, told Agence France Presse.

Tribesmen on Monday kidnapped eight people, among them two Syrians and two Saudis, in southwestern Yemen in a bid to secure the release of two fellow tribesmen, a tribal chief told Agence France Presse.

"Tribesmen from the Subayha tribe intercepted several trucks on the coastal road between the provinces of Lahj and Aden, kidnapping two Syrians, two Saudis and four Yemenis, among them a colonel in the army," said Wahib al-Mansoub.