The UAE's state security court said Tuesday it will announce next month its verdict in the trial of 30 Emiratis and Egyptians charged with forming a Muslim Brotherhood cell.

The verdict will be issued in a hearing on January 21, the court decided in a session attended by 15 of the defendants, WAM state news agency reported.

The long-delayed "Geneva II" peace conference for Syria will open in the Swiss lakeside town of Montreux because of a lack of hotel space in Geneva, the United Nations said Tuesday.

"The international conference on Syria... will be held due to logistical reasons... in Montreux," said Khawal Mattar, spokeswoman for U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who is trying to organize the conference.

Egypt's military has arrested a jihadist suspected of involvement in an ambush that killed 16 Egyptian soldiers near the border with Israel last year, an army spokesman said Tuesday.

Silmi Mohammed Masbah was arrested Monday in Sinai and is allegedly a member of Ansar Beit al-Maqdis -- an Al-Qaida-inspired militant group operating in the restive peninsula -- said military spokesman Colonel Ahmed Ali.

The Islamist supporters of deposed Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi will boycott a referendum on a new constitution next month and organize a campaign against the vote, a spokesman said Monday.

The Anti-Coup Alliance led by Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood movement had initially considered calling on its supporters to vote against the constitution.

The head of a panel which has drafted a new Egyptian constitution urged the government and its Islamist opponents Sunday to reconcile ahead of January's referendum on the charter.

The two-day referendum starting on January 14 is expected to ratify the new constitution and usher in elections for a parliament and president to replace president Mohammed Morsi, ousted by the military in July.

An Egyptian Copt was sentenced Saturday to life in prison as 10 others got jail terms from six months to 15 years over sectarian deaths in April, judicial sources said.

Seven people -- five Christians, one Muslim and an unidentified man -- were killed when sectarian violence erupted in Al-Khusus, north of Cairo, after a Muslim objected to children drawing a swastika on a religious institute.

An official said Saturday that Gaza's rescue service has evacuated more than 4,000 people from homes flooded after four days of heavy rain across the territory.

The downpour continued Saturday. It's part of a storm that covered Jerusalem and some of the West Bank with thick snow.

Egypt said Saturday a referendum on a new draft constitution will be held next month, the first step towards elected rule in a country deeply polarized after president Mohammed Morsi's ouster.

"I call upon you to vote in a referendum on the draft revised constitution on January 14 and 15," interim president Adly Mansour said in a speech to the nation, accompanied by high-ranking officials and those who drafted the new charter.

Two young men were killed in clashes Friday between supporters and opponents of Egypt's toppled Islamist president as police used tear gas to disperse protests, officials said.

Protesters across the country defied the icy weather brought by a rare winter storm to vent anger over the military's July 3 overthrow of Mohammed Morsi, the country's first democratically elected president.

A regional cold snap spread to Egypt on Friday, with some Cairo suburbs seeing snowfall for the first time in years, a weather official said.

The Middle East has been hit by a fierce winter storm, with temperatures in Egypt plummeting over the past two days as torrential rain also lashed parts of the country.