Human Rights Watch on Tuesday urged Jordan to drop criminal charges against an outspoken former lawmaker who called for a revolt in the kingdom.

The criminal charges against Ahmed Abbadi, "who has peacefully advocated making Jordan a republic violate freedom of expression and should be dropped immediately," the New York-based rights watchdog said in a statement.

Israeli officials say they won't warn the U.S. if they decide to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, according to one U.S. intelligence official familiar with the discussions. The pronouncement, delivered in a series of private, top-level conversations, sets a tense tone ahead of meetings in the coming days at the White House and Capitol Hill.

Israeli officials said that if they eventually decide a strike is necessary, they would keep the Americans in the dark to decrease the likelihood that the U.S. would be held responsible for failing to stop Israel's potential attack. The U.S. has been working with the Israelis for months to convince them that an attack would be only a temporary setback to Iran's nuclear program.

Israeli forces engaged in a firefight overnight with gunmen who infiltrated from Egypt's Sinai peninsula, killing one, the Israeli military said on Tuesday.

"Soldiers patrolling along the Israel-Egypt border identified a number of suspects who had infiltrated into Israel," the military said in a statement.

Iran has escalated its crackdown on freedom of expression ahead of this week's parliamentary election, Amnesty International said in a report published on Tuesday.

"In Iran today you put yourself at risk if you do anything that might fall outside the increasingly narrow confines of what the authorities deem socially or politically acceptable," said Ann Harrison, interim deputy director of Amnesty's Middle East and North Africa program.

Efforts to evacuate foreign journalists from the rebel-held Baba Amr district of the flashpoint city of Homs failed on Monday, a Western diplomatic source in the Syrian capital said.

"The evacuation of journalists did not take place but three wounded Syrians were able to leave in Syrian Red Crescent ambulances," the source said.

Syrian security forces and pro-regime gunmen killed 125 people across the country on Monday, among them 68 in a "massacre" in the rebel central province of Homs, activists and a rights group said.

"Sixty-eight civilians were killed today in the western countryside of Homs, in a rural area between the villages of Ram al-Enz and Ghajariyeh, and were taken to the state hospital in the city of Homs," said Rami Abdul Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Israel's new ambassador to Egypt, Yaakov Amitai, presented on Monday his credentials to Egypt's ruling Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, Israel's foreign ministry said.

According to a statement, Amitai and Tantawi "exchanged words through which they emphasized the importance of the peace agreement and cooperation to both countries."

Almost 90 percent of voters approved Syria's new constitution brought in after 11 months of anti-regime protests, the interior minister announced on Monday.

Mohammed al-Shaar also told a press conference that turnout reached 57.4 percent of eligible voters, with 89.4 percent of the 8.376 million who cast their ballots in Sunday's referendum saying "yes" to the new constitution.

Saudi Arabia on Monday accused some countries of being complacent regarding the bloodshed in Syria.

"The kingdom holds all parties that delay international action (on Syria) morally responsible for developments there, especially if they continue being complacent and ignore the interests of the Syrian people," a statement said.

International diplomats at the U.N. Human Rights Council on Monday ramped up the pressure on the Syrian regime to allow the delivery of aid to civilians caught up in the bloodshed.

"We hope there will be a positive response from the Syrian authorities so that we can help all those affected" by the violence, council president Laura Dupuy Lasserre said as delegates met in Geneva.