Attackers daubed death threats on the walls of the Baptist House church in central Jerusalem overnight and vandalized three cars parked nearby in the latest "price tag" hate crime, police said on Monday.

"Anti-Christian graffiti was found on the walls of the Baptist church and the tyres of three cars parked nearby were slashed," said police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld of the church which is located on Narkis Street in west Jerusalem.

A court has sentenced a Kuwaiti couple to death for beating and then murdering their Filipina domestic helper, newspapers in the Gulf state reported on Monday.

The criminal court found the disabled husband and his wife guilty of "premeditated murder" after throwing the maid from their car and driving over her, al-Rai and al-Anbaa dailies reported, citing the verdict.

Yemen future president Abdrabuh Mansour Hadi has called for urgent foreign aid to help revive the country's shattered economy, and pledged to address the concerns of southern separatists and northern rebels.

In a televised speech broadcast late Sunday, the current vice president outlined his government's two-year plan, focusing on the need to reunify the army, destroy al-Qaida, and carry-out "radical reforms."

The top U.S. military officer warned Sunday that intervention in Syria would be "very difficult" and said it would be "premature" to arm the besieged country's opposition movement.

General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CNN that Syria was the focus of competing Middle Eastern states, notably Iran and Saudi Arabia, and posed different problems for the United States than Libya did.

Libya will hold its first election for a constituent assembly on schedule in June, the election commission head was quoted as saying by the official news agency on Sunday.

"The elections will be held on schedule as set by the constitutional declaration" of the ruling National Transitional Council, the official LANA news agency quoted Othman al-Kajiji as saying.

Yemen's sole presidential candidate who will be voted in this week is committed to "destroying" al-Qaida, U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan said on Sunday in Sanaa.

Brennan who met on Saturday in Sanaa with Vice President Abdrabuh Mansour Hadi -- the sole consensus candidate in Tuesday's polls - said he was "very encouraged by (Hadi's) comments" on al-Qaida.

Egypt's first presidential elections since a popular uprising ousted veteran leader Hosni Mubarak a year ago will be held in the first week of June, officials were quoted as saying on Sunday.

"The election will start in the first days of June and will end in the last week of June if there is a run-off," Ahmed Shams El-Din, a member of the presidential election committee told the independent daily Al-Masry Al-Youm.

Three soldiers were wounded in a clash with southern separatists near a polling booth in Lahij province on Sunday, two days ahead of Yemen's presidential election, a government official said.

"Gunmen from the Southern Movement attacked military vehicles carrying ballot boxes to a polling booth in a school" near Al-anad air base in Lahij, the official told Agence France Presse. "Three soldiers were wounded in an exchange of fire."

Syrian security forces on Sunday killed at least 20 people across the country and flooded a tense neighborhood where a mourner was shot dead in the largest anti-regime rally seen in Damascus, activists said.

Regime troops killed nine people in the restive northwestern province of Idlib, nine in the central protest hub of Homs, one in the eastern province of Deir al-Zour and another in the southern province of Daraa, the cradle of the uprising, the Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said.

The top U.S. military commander said Sunday he believed it would be "premature" to take military action against Iran in response to its nuclear program, as Britain urged Israel to give the diplomatic route a chance to succeed.

U.S. General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" program that economic sanctions have to be given a chance to work, and the United States and its allies should be better prepared for a military option.