U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned on Tuesday of the "great risks" of spiraling violence between Israel and the Gaza Strip and called on Arab nations to push Hamas to accept a ceasefire.

"There are great risks in what is happening there and the potential of an even greater escalation of violence," Kerry told reporters in Vienna, as he wrapped up two days of talks on Iran's nuclear program.

In Syria's second city Aleppo, craters blasted by regime air raids on opposition-held areas have been transformed into improvised swimming pools for children to cool off in raging summer temperatures.

Although the water is filthy, the war-weary children of the country's one-time commercial capital find in these pools a rare opportunity to both have fun and seek relief from the oppressive heat.

Iraq's sharply divided parliament elected a speaker Tuesday in a step towards the delayed formation of a new government, as a renewed bid to recapture Tikrit from militants ended in retreat.

World powers and Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, have piled pressure on MPs to set aside their differences in the face of a jihadist-led offensive that has overrun swathes of territory north and west of Baghdad.

Italian Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini will on Tuesday visit an Israeli town hit by rocket strikes from Gaza and meet Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas as part of a diplomatic push for peace, her ministry said.

Mogherini "will be in Ramallah this afternoon to meet president Mahmud Abbas and foreign minister Riyad al-Malki", the ministry said in a statement.

President Bashar Assad begins a new seven-year term Wednesday looking to play up a string of battlefield victories while trying to win over war-weary Syrians and those fearful of jihadists.

His swearing-in after a controversial June election -- held in government-controlled areas only in the midst of a raging civil war -- comes with Western policy in disarray after Sunni militants captured a vast swathe of neighboring Iraq, as well as a big chunk of eastern Syria.

Two Iranian airmen were killed when their ageing F-4 Phantom fighter jet crashed Tuesday in the south of the country, the official IRNA news agency reported.

The plane went down near the city of Shiraz and "unfortunately the pilot and the co-pilot were killed," Colonel Hossein Mohammadi, a senior Iranian military official, was quoted as saying, without elaborating.

U.S. military teams have completed an assessment of Iraqi security forces, the Pentagon said Monday, amid reports the American officers came away with bleak conclusions.

The teams were deployed to Baghdad this month after Sunni militants swiftly advanced across the country in a string of disastrous battlefield defeats for Shiite-led government forces.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday stepped up his rhetoric against Israel over its deadly air offensive on Gaza, accusing the Jewish state of committing "state terrorism" against the Palestinians.

Presenting himself as the sole world leader speaking up for the Palestinians, Erdogan said that any normalization in the troubled ties between Israel and Ankara was currently out of the question.

Kuwait's opposition on Tuesday condemned a government decision to "revoke" the citizenship of nationals deemed to pose a risk to national security and called on the government to resign.

On Monday, the Gulf state's cabinet ordered the interior ministry to review the citizenship of people "who undermine the country's security and stability" and vowed an "iron fist" policy in a crackdown on dissent following violent protests.

The death toll from Israel's week-long campaign in Gaza rose Tuesday to 192, after another six Palestinians died, four of them in strikes before Israel accepted an Egyptian ceasefire.

Emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said three people were killed in two separate air strikes on the southern city of Khan Yunis.