Israeli police on Saturday arrested three Jewish teenagers suspected of attacking a Palestinian in a Jewish neighborhood in the Holy City, a police spokeswoman said.

"Three Jewish teenagers suspected of having attacked a Palestinian were arrested," said Luba Samri.

The Druze of Idlib province have not yet taken up arms in the war to unseat Syrian President Bashar Assad but have declared their support for Sunni Muslims at the heart of the rebellion.

"We are and will forever remain brothers," says Ayham, an elder of the Druze community in the northwestern province where the two communities live side by side.

Aleppo was suffering from severe drinking water shortages on Saturday after a main pipeline was destroyed in a northern district of the city, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

"A main water line was destroyed near the water department in Bustan al-Basha. This is very important because it provides drinking water to the whole city," Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told Agence France Presse by phone.

Protesters took to the streets in western Tunisia on Saturday, reigniting tensions in the impoverished town of Kasserine, an Agence France Presse correspondent said.

Dozens of residents who had occupied the governor's office on Thursday staged a sit-in at the Tunisian labor union's premises in the town of Kasserine, with 23 of them claiming to be on hunger strike.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said on Saturday he will make a bid on September 27 to obtain non-member status at the United Nations.

"We will go to the U.N. General Assembly for consultations with our friends on the draft resolution calling for the upgrade of Palestine (to non-member status)" in the United Nations, Abbas said in a televised address.

Clashes between the army and militants in southern Yemen on Saturday killed three suspected al-Qaida members and wounded two soldiers, an official said.

The militants attacked a vehicle carrying troops near the coastal town of Shaqrah, in Abyan province, before army reinforcements arrived and the soldiers killed "three extremists," said the official on condition of anonymity.

Al-Qaida's front group, the Islamic State of Iraq, said it carried out 131 attacks in the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, a statement on the Honein jihadist forum said.

The ISI said the attacks in Diyala province and south of Baghdad were mainly against security forces and anti-Qaida militiamen, according to the statement posted on Friday.

Egypt's armed forces have killed 32 "criminal elements" in an ongoing operation against Islamists in the lawless Sinai peninsula, a military spokesman said on Saturday.

Colonel Ahmed Mohammed Ali told reporters that 38 people including "non-Egyptians" had been arrested during "Operation Sinai," which was launched on August 7, days after gunmen killed 16 soldiers at a border post there.

Syrian troops backed by tanks and helicopters repelled a rebel attack on an army base in the northern city of Aleppo on Saturday after a 20-hour battle, military officials and witnesses said.

The government forces pushed rebels out of the Hanano military base, a fortress-like compound in the east of the city, parts of which rebels claimed to have captured on Friday, they said.

Gunmen fired at a police station in Egypt's North Sinai on Saturday, but there were no casualties, security officials told AFP.

The gunmen, riding in two vehicles, opened fire at the Sheikh Zuwayyid police station near Egypt's border with the Gaza Strip at dawn, the officials said.