Nicolas Bons, a young convert to Islam from a comfortable middle class French background, has died fighting in Syria barely four months after his half-brother met the same fate, their father said Monday.

In a story that has provoked bewilderment, the mother of 30-year-old Nicolas was informed by text message from the frontline that her son had been "martyred" on December 22 in a suicide truck bombing in the Syrian province of Homs, the father, Gerard Bons, told Agence France Presse by phone from his home in French Guiana.

Tunisia's national assembly voted Monday to enshrine gender equality "without discrimination" in its draft constitution, a key step towards safeguarding the most liberal laws in the Arab world on women's rights.

"All male and female citizens have the same rights and duties. They are equal before the law without discrimination," states article 20 of the text, which was approved by 159 lawmakers out of the 169 who voted.

An explosion Monday at a guard post outside a Libyan courthouse in Benghazi killed one judiciary policeman and seriously wounded another, officials said.

Libya's second city, the cradle of the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that toppled Moammar Gadhafi, has seen near daily attacks on security forces in recent months as the weak central government has tried to rein in former rebel brigades turned militias.

Syrian rebels laid siege to jihadists from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in their northern stronghold Monday, hoping to crush the al-Qaida affiliate accused of widespread abuses.

A broad coalition of moderates and Islamists opposed to President Bashar Assad is seeking to drive ISIL -- which is accused of kidnapping, torturing and killing rival rebels and civilians -- from its stronghold in the northern city of Raqa.

Syrian rebels in the northern Damascus district of Barzeh on Sunday agreed a local ceasefire with President Bashar Assad's regime after nearly a year of fighting and bombardment, activists said.

"After intense negotiation in recent days between the regime and the (rebel) Free Syrian Army through mediators from the neighborhood, the following agreement has been reached: ceasefire between the two sides," a statement posted by the opposition local council said.

Unemployed Tunisian youths ransacked an empty police post in the impoverished central region of Gafsa overnight and torched its contents, witnesses told Agence France Presse on Monday.

Tunisia remains prey to sometimes violent social unrest, especially in the neglected center of the country, three years after an impoverished street vendor set himself on fire in a desperate act of protest that sparked the first Arab Spring uprising.

After four days of intense diplomacy, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry headed home Monday, insisting progress had been made despite failing to agree a framework to guide Israeli-Palestinian talks.

On his 10th visit to the region as U.S. top diplomat, Kerry spent hours locked in separate meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas.

Tribesmen in Yemen's restive Hadramawt province blew up a major oil pipeline in retaliation for the killing by the army of one of their men, security and industry officials said Monday.

Hadramawt has been shaken since December 20 by protests against the central government after the army killed local tribal chief Said Ben Habrish and his bodyguards at a checkpoint.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called Monday for Fallujah residents to expel "terrorists" holding the city to avoid an assault by security forces, as they battled gunmen in nearby Ramadi.

Iraq is preparing a "major attack" to retake Fallujah, which has been outside government control for days, while parts of Anbar provincial capital Ramadi, farther west, are also held by Al-Qaida-linked fighters.

A Turkish photographer kidnapped while covering the civil war in neighboring Syria has returned home after being freed from weeks in captivity, his newspaper said on Monday.

Bunyamin Aygun, who works for the newspaper Milliyet, was taken hostage by radical Islamists in mid-December during a reporting mission in the war-torn country.