A new Egyptian constitution replacing the one suspended on president Mohammed Morsi's ouster will be put to a referendum by November's end, a spokesman for the panel drafting the charter said Sunday.

The new charter would lead to parliamentary and then presidential elections by mid-2014 according to a timetable set by military-installed president Adly Mansour after Morsi's overthrow in July.

A U.S. Navy helicopter crashed into the Red Sea on Sunday and the fate of five crew members "is still being determined," the military said.

The MH-60S Knighthawk was flying with the guided missile destroyer USS William P. Lawrence, part of a carrier group dispatched to the region to increase pressure on Syria.

Members of two al-Qaida-affiliated rebel groups have clashed in Syria's northeastern Hasakeh province, with one group seizing the local headquarters of the other, a Syrian NGO said on Sunday.

Fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), an Iraqi al-Qaida branch that has expanded into Syria, attacked the headquarters of al-Nusra Front in Shadadi, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Eight people including four members of al-Qaida were killed on Sunday in a clash between Yemeni tribesmen and militants in Maarib province, a tribal source said.

The firefight erupted after al-Qaida fighters ambushed members of al-Rashid Munif tribe, wounding two of them, the source said.

Israel on Sunday answered EU anger over the confiscation of humanitarian aid for Palestinians with accusations diplomats at the scene defied a court order and one struck a policeman.

"Diplomats are sent by their governments to be a bridge and not act as provocateurs," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

Officials were counting votes on Sunday after Iraqi Kurdistan's first election in four years, with opposition groups hoping to end the decades-old dominance of the two main former rebel parties.

The vote itself went off largely without incident on Saturday, with turnout pegged at 73.9 percent.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Sunday accused the United States of blackmailing Russia over a tough U.N. resolution against Syria, and said the West is blinded by the idea of regime change in the war-torn country.

"Our American partners are beginning to blackmail us: if Russia won't support a resolution under Chapter VII in the U.N. Security Council, then we will stop the work in the Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons," Lavrov said in a Channel One interview, according to Russian agencies.

Iranian President Hassan Rowhani warned the West on Sunday that it will "regret" any military intervention in Syria, and called for dialogue to stop the war in its ally.

"Do not seek a new war in the region because you will regret it," Rowhani said in a remarks at a military parade in Tehran addressed to Western governments who have called for military strikes on Syria.

A mortar round hit the compound of Moscow's embassy in the Syrian capital Damascus on Sunday, injuring three people, the Russian foreign ministry said.

"On September 22 as a result of shelling by the rebels of the Damascus neighborhood of Mazzeh, one of the shells exploded on the territory of the Russian Embassy in Syria," the ministry said in a statement.

The U.N. warned on Sunday against revenge attacks in Iraq after two blasts killed 73 people in a Shiite area of Baghdad a day after a Sunni mosque was bombed.

Saturday's bombings struck near funeral tents for a tribal sheikh in the Sadr City district of north Baghdad and also wounded more than 200 people.