U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday announced an extra $155 million dollars to aid refugees fleeing what he said was "barbarism" propagated by the Assad government against Syrians.

Obama, unveiling a grant, which will take U.S. humanitarian help to Syrians to $365 million, also promised that the Assad regime "will come to an end. The Syrian people will have their chance to forge their own future."

Israel's parliamentary vote did not end hopes for peace with the Palestinians but instead has opened up a new chance for dialogue, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton argued Tuesday.

"I actually think this election opens doors, not nails them shut," she said, during a so-called "global townhall" meeting, in which she took questions from Internet-users and broadcasters around the world.

After winning a tug-of-war with the opposition over Egypt's new constitution in December, Islamist President Mohamed Morsi faces a fresh crisis, one that is hard to pass without him making concessions.

The gravity of the crisis was highlighted Tuesday by Defense Minister General Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, who warned if the current situation persists it could "lead to a collapse of the state".

Iraqi officials said Tuesday they would up the salaries of Sunni militiamen who fought al-Qaida during the country's brutal sectarian war, the latest bid to appease mostly-Sunni anti-government rallies.

The immediate two-thirds increase in wages for the Sahwa, otherwise known as the Sons of Iraq or the Awakening, comes as officials have trumpeted a substantial prisoner release in the face of more than a month of demonstrations in the country's north and west.

Israel on Tuesday boycotted a special U.N. Human Rights Council review of its rights situation, becoming the first country ever to snub such a session.

"I see that the delegation of Israel is not in the room," council president Remigiusz Henczel told the delegates at the United Nations in Geneva.

Palestinian fighter Saeed Marragha, alias Abou Moussa, died of illness Tuesday in Syria where his Fatah-Intifada group was based decades after splitting from the mainstream Fatah faction, his group said.

Abou Moussa "died at dawn at a hospital" in Damascus, succumbing to a long illness, a Fatah-Intifada spokesman said, adding the veteran military commander would be buried in Syria's capital following noon Muslim prayers on Wednesday.

Egypt's judiciary has ordered the arrest of members of the "Black Bloc", a shadowy group of militants who have appeared among protesters during the latest clashes with police, a judicial source said Tuesday.

Prosecutor General Talaat Ibrahim Abdallah has authorized the arrest "of all people suspected of belonging to the group and ordered that they be brought before the courts," the source said.

Iraq's top energy official repeated claims on Tuesday that the country's autonomous Kurdish region was "illegally" exporting oil, the latest in a long-running dispute between the two sides.

The remarks from Hussein al-Shahristani, the deputy prime minister responsible for energy affairs, come as the central government in Baghdad and Kurdish authorities in Arbil tussle over a disputed oil exploration deal with ExxonMobil and a row over energy contracts.

Two Tunisian security agents were wounded in a gunfight with suspected hardline Islamists during a night time operation in the western town of Kasserine, police said on Tuesday.

"The special operation targeted three people suspected of belonging to a Salafist group," said a senior police official in Kasserine.

A military tribunal on Tuesday handed two police officers jail terms of 10 and 20 years respectively for the "voluntary and involuntary homicide" of five Tunisians killed during the 2010-2011 uprising.

The tribunal in the central city of Sfax sentenced Commander Mourad Jouini to 10 years in prison and Lieutenant Bassam Akremi, in absentia, to 20 years, a court official told Agence France Presse.