The European Union offered an extra 165 million euros of aid to victims of Syria's unrelenting civil war Tuesday while urging world powers to do more to ensure help reaches those trapped in the fighting.

"We see the humanitarian situation going from bad to worse, we have seen no improvement," EU Aid Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva told AFP before departing for a donor conference in Kuwait City, following the U.N.'s largest appeal ever for a single emergency.

Charity organizations pledged $400 million (292 million euros) Tuesday to help alleviate the humanitarian plight of Syrians affected by their country's civil war, participants at a meeting of charitable NGOs said.

Kuwait's International Islamic Charitable Organization said Kuwaiti charities pledged $142 million, while dozens of NGOs attending the meeting promised the rest.

The Vatican urged an unconditional ceasefire in Syria and the involvement of all regional players including Iran in peace talks starting next week, as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited the Holy See on Tuesday.

Kerry said after meeting with Pope Francis's right-hand man Pietro Parolin that the U.S. welcomed Vatican support for the Geneva II talks due to begin on January 22.

Tunisia celebrated the third anniversary Tuesday of the overthrow of a decades-old dictatorship in the first Arab Spring uprising, but political divisions have hampered the adoption of a new constitution by this symbolic deadline.

Tunisia's leaders launched a low-key ceremony in the Kasbah district of the capital, where the government's headquarters are located, to mark the event.

Britain and the United States have told the main Syrian opposition that they will stop their support if it fails to send a delegation to peace talks this month, British media reported on Tuesday.

"The U.S. and UK are telling us you need to go to Geneva," an unnamed senior official in the Syrian National Coalition was quoted as saying by the BBC and the Guardian newspaper.

Saudi authorities beheaded Tuesday two Pakistanis for drug smuggling in the ultra-conservative kingdom's first executions of the year, the interior ministry said.

Abrar Hussein Nizar Hussein was executed in the Red Sea city of Jeddah after being convicted of trying to smuggle in heroin hidden in his stomach, the ministry said in a statement carried by SPA state news agency.

Israel's defense minister has lashed at U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, saying a security plan he presented is "not worth the paper it was written on," an Israeli newspaper reported Tuesday.

"The American plan for security arrangements that was shown to us... provides neither security nor peace," Moshe Yaalon was quoted by Yediot Aharonot as saying.

Turkish anti-terror police on Tuesday detained 25 people in a nationwide operation against al-Qaida that targeted an Islamic charity linked to the beleaguered government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Police carried out simultaneous operations in several cities and raided the homes of five allegedly senior al-Qaida operatives, the Hurriyet newspaper reported.

A series of attacks in the Baghdad area, including four car bombs targeting civilians, have killed at least 30 people, security and medical officials said Tuesday.

The violence Monday evening was the latest in a months-long surge in bloodshed that, coupled with a deadly weeks-long standoff in Anbar province, has sparked fears Iraq is slipping back into the brutal sectarian war that killed tens of thousands in 2006 and 2007.

Egyptians queued to vote on a new constitution Tuesday amid high security, in a referendum likely to launch a presidential bid by the army chief who overthrew Islamist president Mohammed Morsi.

Polling at most stations got off to a smooth start, but five people were killed in clashes between Morsi supporters and police and anti-Morsi groups in central and southern Egypt, security officials said.