Israeli forces from the Shin Bet internal security agency shot dead a Palestinian in the West Bank on Monday after he rammed their car and attacked them with an axe, the intelligence agency said.

In a statement, Shin Bet said a number of their agents were travelling in a military jeep in the West Bank when a Palestinian car slammed into them, flipping their vehicle.

A Saudi F-15 fighter with only the pilot on board crashed into Gulf waters while on a training mission in the kingdom's Eastern Province, the defense ministry announced on Monday.

The plane fell into "Saudi territorial waters and the search for the pilot is still ongoing," the ministry said, adding that an investigation has been launched into the cause of the crash.

The Syrian army bombarded southern districts of the capital and suburbs overnight as part of an assault aimed at driving rebels out of footholds around Damascus, a monitoring group said on Monday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said artillery gunners targeted the districts of Hajar al-Aswad and Tadamun as well as the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmuk in southern Damascus.

Israel's ambassador to Britain was summoned to the Foreign Office on Monday to discuss plans for new settlements, officials said, warning of "strong reaction" to the proposals.

Foreign Office minister Alistair Burt called in Daniel Taub to warn that settlement building threatens the two state-solution and makes progress on peace talks with the Palestinians harder to achieve, the Foreign Office said.

Even if NATO foreign ministers approve Turkey's request to deploy Patriot missiles on the border with Syria as expected, it will still take some weeks to get them in place, a top U.S. official said Monday.

The United States was "hopeful that NATO will be in a position to respond positively and agree to help Turkey bolster its air defences," a senior State Department official said.

U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon warned Sunday that if Israeli implemented its latest plan for new settlements it would deal an "almost fatal blow" to any prospects for peace with the Palestinians.

Israel's announcement about the 3,000 Jewish settler homes, whose planned location was not revealed, came in the wake of a historic vote by the United Nations General Assembly to upgrade Palestine's diplomatic status.

Israel must provide an "immediate and detailed explanation" for its targeting of journalists and media buildings during last month's Gaza conflict, the Committee to Protect Journalists said on Sunday.

In a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the watchdog said it was "gravely concerned that Israeli airstrikes targeted individual journalists and media facilities in the Gaza Strip between November 18 and 20."

Fifteen civilians were killed in a bomb attack on Sunday in a government-held district of the central Syrian city of Homs, state media reported.

"A terrorist attack struck the Hamra district of Homs," the state SANA news agency said, adding that it killed 15 people and wounded 24. State television said it was a car bombing.

A Tunisian trade union on Sunday called an end to a general strike that triggered five days of violence fueled by disappointment nearly two years after the country's revolution.

"We decided to suspend the general strike," Ahmed Chefai of the UGTT union's executive board for the town of Siliana told a crowd of around 100 people.

The opposition vowed Sunday to press on with protests until a newly elected parliament is abolished and a disputed law scrapped, a day after Kuwait's Shiite minority emerged as main victors of a largely-boycotted vote.

"We will continue with our national and peaceful protests under the umbrella of the constitution to bring the downfall of the new parliament," Islamist opposition leader and former MP Faisal al-Muslim told Agence France Presse.