Israel's army early Wednesday arrested five members of Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, including a member of parliament, a prisoners' support group said.

The five were arrested at dawn at their homes in the southern West Bank city of Hebron, the Ramallah-based Prisoners' Club told Agence France Presse.

A series of attacks near Baghdad and north of the capital killed four people on Wednesday, the latest in an apparent spike in violence just weeks ahead of Iraq's first elections in three years.

Separate bombings south of Baghdad -- one inside a restaurant and the other a car bombing near a police checkpoint -- killed two people and left 26 others wounded, officials said.

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi expects parliamentary elections to be held in October, the official MENA news agency said Wednesday, after the vote was delayed by legal and political challenges.

Morsi, speaking to the Egyptian community in Doha where he attended an Arab summit, said he "expected parliamentary elections would be held in October and that parliament would be in session before the year's end," MENA said.

The White House said Tuesday that NATO would not provide Patriot missile batteries to protect rebel strongholds in Syria, following a request from opposition chief Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib.

Khatib asked for an extension of the umbrella provided by Patriot positions on the Turkish border designed to intercept any missiles fired from the Syrian side, as he took his seat at the Arab League summit in Doha.

A group of prominent Syrian opposition members on Tuesday criticized the role of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Syrian National Coalition and accused regional governments of "hegemony" over the body.

In a letter addressed to the Arab League, which is meeting in Doha, the group warned that the opposition was experiencing a crisis as a result.

Arab League leaders gathered for an annual summit in Doha on Tuesday gave member states the "right" to offer Syrians all means of self-defense, including arms supplies.

The Arab summit affirms the "right of every state to offer all forms of self-defense, including military, to support the resistance of the Syrian people and the Free Syrian Army," a resolution said.

A suicide bombing in northern Damascus on Tuesday killed three people and wounded several others, state news agency SANA reported, hours after a girl was killed in a mortar attack in the city.

"A terrorist suicide bomber blew up a van in the east of Rukn al-Din neighborhood in Damascus," SANA said, citing an official as saying at least three people were killed.

A pro-democracy activist and opponent of Egypt's ruling Muslim Brotherhood turned himself in to the prosecutor's office for questioning on Tuesday, a day after an order for his arrest.

Alaa Abdel Fattah was "temporarily released" a few hours later, a judicial source said.

An alleged spy cell dismantled last week in Saudi Arabia had "direct links" to Iran's intelligence services, the kingdom's interior ministry said on Tuesday.

"Preliminary investigations and physical evidence that has been collected as well as the defendants' statements on this case have all revealed direct links between this cell and Iranian intelligence services," a ministry spokesman said in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency.

At least one child was killed and several others were wounded on Tuesday in a mortar attack on a compound housing several schools in central Damascus, a monitoring group and state news agency SANA said.

"A young girl was killed and several other students were injured when mortars fired by terrorists hit a school compound in the Baramkeh district of Damascus," SANA said, without giving the victim's age.