EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton is pushing for comprehensive guidelines to introduce separate labeling for products from Israeli settlements in the West Bank, a newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Ashton sent a letter to European commissioners urging them to draft the guidelines by the end of 2013, the Haaretz newspaper said.

An Al-Qaida front group on Tuesday claimed brazen assaults on Iraqi prisons that freed hundreds of militants including top leaders, killed over 40 people and threaten to further erode confidence in the government.

The attacks on the prisons in Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad, and Taji, north of the capital, illustrate the growing reach of militants in Iraq and the deteriorating security situation in the country, where more than 600 people have been killed in violence so far this month.

Four Syrians including an eight-year-old girl were brought to a hospital in Israel after they were wounded by fighting in the war-torn country, a medical source said on Tuesday.

"Yesterday night an injured eight-year-old girl and her 48-year-old mother were treated for fractures to their arms and legs from shrapnel," said a spokesman for Ziv hospital, which is located north of the Sea of Galilee.

Pressure grew Tuesday on Egypt's new leaders to release Mohamed Morsi from detention as clashes between supporters and opponents of the deposed Islamist president left 10 people dead.

The deadly clashes which also wounded dozens broke out on Monday, raged through the night and were continuing on Tuesday, a day after Morsi's family vowed to sue the military over his ouster.

U.N. peace envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi said Monday he was pressing on with plans for a conference aimed at ending the fighting, though no firm date is in sight.

"It is extremely difficult to bring people who have been killing one another for two years just by a magic wand to a conference like this. It will take time, but I hope it will happen," Brahimi told a handful of reporters on the sidelines of an event in Washington.

The top U.S. general has informed Congress of options for military intervention in Syria, but stressed that the decision of whether to go to war was one for civilian leaders.

In a non-classified letter made public Monday, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey set out five options -- from nonlethal intelligence and weapons training to a boots-on-the-ground plan to "assault and secure" the Syrian regime's chemical weapons.

Secretary of State John Kerry is finalizing his selection of a team to help shepherd Middle East peace talks on a day to day basis, a U.S. official said Monday.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki would neither confirm nor deny reports that a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, has been chosen to head up the U.S. negotiating team.

A Syrian rebel group which has proclaimed loyalty to al-Qaida posted an audio recording attributed to its leader on Monday in which he promised a fightback.

Julani's speech, entitled: "The Coming Days are Better Than Those of the Past," were his first since April 10, SITE Intelligence, which monitored the posting, said.

Bahrain's prosecutor on Monday charged three men arrested in connection with a car bombing outside a Sunni mosque with forming a "terror" group, the official BNA news agency reported.

Police chief Tariq al-Hasan named the suspects as Hasan al-Madhum, 25, Ali Ashoor, 34, and Abbas Zuhair, 32, and said that other suspects were on the run.

Four people were killed in clashes between supporters and opponents of ousted Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi Monday, one in Cairo and three to its north, security and medical sources said.

Two people died in clashes in Qalyub, north of Cairo, and a third was killed when he fell under the wheels of a train as he tried to flee, the security source told Agence France Presse.