Dudu Greenspan/AP

An Israeli woman is taken out of a bank in the town of Beersheba, southern Israel, on Monday after an attempted robbery in which at least five people were killed.

Editor's note: This story includes a correction.

TEL AVIV, Israel -- Five people died on Monday after a robber tried to hold up a bank in southern Israel and then took a woman hostage for over an hour, officials said. The robber shot himself dead as police closed in, police said.

The robber carried out the botched heist in a residential street in Beersheba at about lunchtime local time, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said on Monday. It was a branch of Bank Hapoalim, Reuters reported.

"The moment he entered the bank he started killing," Rosenfeld added on Tuesday.  

The suspect remained at the scene and took a woman hostage, officials said. The woman was freed after he shot himself dead.

Police initially said there were two robbers but later revised that to one.  The error was discovered after a man initially thought to have been one of the robbers was taken to hospital and treated for gunshot wounds, Rosenfeld said.

“Four people have been killed and the robber apparently shot himself dead. The scene is now clear," Reuters quoted regional police commander Yoram Levy as telling Israel Radio.

Israeli media reports said the four victims were three bank employees and a customer, Reuters reported.

Four civilians were injured, Rosenfeld said. 

Violent bank heists are rare in Israel. In 2011, a robber killed a security guard in a bank in the center of the country.

Reuters and NBC News' Alastair Jamieson contributed to this report.

An al Qaeda-linked cell disrupted in Egypt was planning suicide attacks on the French and U.S. embassies, the state news agency MENA reported, according to Reuters.

In light of this news and last week’s stabbing of a U.S. citizen on the embassy’s perimeter, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo alerted U.S. citizens to exercise “elevated awareness.”

“The knife attack on the Embassy's perimeter, along with weekend media reports acknowledging that Egyptian authorities have disrupted a terror cell possibly targeting Egyptian and Western interests, serve as yet another reminder of the need to exercise good situational awareness,” read a statement from the embassy, which was obtained by NBC News. 

According to Reuters, authorities announced Saturday they had captured three Egyptians with al Qaeda links, saying they had been found in possession of 22 pounds of explosive materials.

"The investigations revealed that the suspects were intending to carry out terrorist bomb operations inside Egypt via suicide operations, penetrating the security cordon in front of the American and French embassies with a car bomb," MENA said, citing a source in the state security prosecutor's office, according to Reuters.

MENA said the suspects had escaped from prison in 2011, during the revolts that removed Hosni Mubarak from power.

Reuters contributed to this report.

This story was originally published on Wed May 15, 2013 2:33 PM EDT

Nine Turkish citizens were arrested Sunday in connection with the car bomb attacks that killed 46 people in a town near the Syrian border on Saturday.

The attacks, in the town of Reyhanli, were carried out by a group linked to Syria's intelligence service, Turkey’s deputy prime minister, Besir Atalay, told reporters.

However, Syria rejected Turkey's allegations that it was behind the bombs.

"Syria did not and will never do such an act because our values do not allow this. It is not anyone's right to hurl unfounded accusations," Syrian Information Minister Omran Zubi was quoted as saying on state media.

The car bombs increased fears that Syria's civil war was dragging in neighboring states despite renewed diplomatic moves towards ending two years of fighting in which more than 70,000 people have been killed.

Reyhanli, in the southern Hatay province, is in an area known to be home to many refugees. There are more than 300,000 Syrian refugees in Turkey, most of them in camps along the volatile border

It has also become a logistics base for rebels fighting Syria’s president Bashar Assad.

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said those involved were thought also to have staged an attack on the Syrian coastal town of Banias a week ago in which at least 62 people were killed, Reuters reported.

"The attack has nothing to do with the Syrian refugees in Turkey, it's got everything to do with the Syrian regime," Davutoglu said in an interview on TRT television, Reuters said.

"We should be careful against ethnic provocations in Turkey and Lebanon after the Banias massacre," he said. 

Related: Turkey PM: Red line has been crossed

This story was originally published on Sun May 12, 2013 9:10 AM EDT

CAIRO, Egypt -- An American academic was being treated in a Cairo hospital Thursday after being stabbed in the neck near the U.S. Embassy, prosecutors and diplomatic officials in Egypt said.

Christopher Stone, a fellow at the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) was attacked outside the perimeter of the building about noon local time (3 a.m. ET), Embassy officials said.

Police immediately apprehended the suspect and he is in custody where he is suspected of attempted murder, the Egyptian prosecutor’s office said.

Stone’s identity was confirmed by San Antonio-based ARCE. 

Prosecutors said Stone told them he had gone to the embassy to finish some paperwork for his wife when he was challenged by a young man who asked him twice about his nationality.

The suspect, who is unemployed, then stabbed the victim in the neck, prosecutors said.

According to an online biography, Stone is on sabbatical in Cairo as a research fellow for ARCE. He is associate professor of Arabic and head of the Arabic Program at the City University in New York, according to the biography on the university’s website.

NBC News' Alastair Jamieson contributed to this report.

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Saudi Arabia's Wojdan Shaherkani (top) competes in the London 2012 Olympic Games

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- Girls in Saudi Arabia are to be allowed to take part in school sports for the first time in the latest sign that the Islamic kingdom is inching forward on the contentious issue of women’s rights.

Female students enrolled in private girls’ schools will be able to take part as long as they wear ‘decent clothing’ and are supervised by female Saudi instructors within the tight regulations of the country’s Ministry of Education, the official Saudi Press Agency announced Sunday.

“I think it’s a really good idea,” said Hala Tashkandi, a junior student of Applied Linguistics at Prince Sultan University, a private college in the capital, Riyadh. “Physical education for girls is sorely lacking, which is a shame because some of the best athletes I know are female.”

However, most girls are educated in public schools where the rules forbidding female competitive sports will not be relaxed.

It means school sport will remain restricted to members of the wealthy elite, despite the country’s need for more female athletes. Last year, the country's first two female Olympians took part in the London games following pressure from the International Olympic Committee which signaled at the Beijing 2008 games that it would no longer allow countries to restrict entry on the basis of gender.

Sarah Attar competed in the women’s 800m race, while Wojdan Ali Seraj Abdulrahim Shaherkani took part in judo after a deal was reached with officials allowing her to wear her hijab.

Saudi women are barred from driving and must seek the permission of a male "guardian", usually a father, husband or brother, to marry, travel abroad, open a bank account, work or have some forms of elective surgery.

Until recently, it seemed Saudi Arabia’s vocal minority of zealots were winning the ideological battle and sustaining the marginalization of women, but recent announcements suggest the tide may finally be turning.

Streeter Lecka / Getty Images

Sarah Attar of Saudi Arabia competes in the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Last week, a campaign featuring domestic abuse was launched to raise awareness in a country where such subjects are still considered largely taboo.

In January, the country’s reform-minded monarch, King Abdallah, appointed 30 women to the Shura Council despite a huge backlashfrom the religious establishment and comments on twitter and local blogs that branded them “infidels” and women of “loose character.”

Manal Sanai a final year student at Najd, a private girls’ school in central Riyadh, said she was excited by news about school sports. “Most girls don’t know their potential in sports because of the lack of exposure to any kind of physical activity and this will be a good chance to develop their talents,” she said.

Sports and activities such as dancing do take place, but only in private clubs with membership fees of upwards of $2,000 a year and can still be raided by the Mutawwa – or religious police.

Afaf Al Hamdan, the former manager of the Al Manahil Center for Women, which runs several physical educational programs catering to the city’s wealthy elite, questioned why sport would not be extended to public schools.

“The big bulk of students are in government schools and don’t have the means to pay for private clubs,” she said. “If these classes are run in a female environment with students dressed properly, then there is nothing against Sharia [law].

“All women in this country, unlike those of my generation who had never even heard of exercise, should have access to the benefits of a healthy lifestyle.”

That sentiment was echoed by Tashkandi, who pointed out that the Olympians Shaherkhani and Attar were only given two weeks to train because of wrangles over their participation.

“There’s so much potential and it could be incredibly helpful in terms of their physical and mental health as well,” she said.

Related:

• Saudis put a black eye on domestic abuse
• Video: Women in Saudi Arabia

Ma'an Network

Sewar Salman, 21, is competing in the reality show "The President." The winners -- and three runners-up -- will be named unofficial youth envoys to three European countries and Russia.

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- The ballroom in the occupied West Bank’s only luxury hotel hummed with nervous activity, with shouts of “action,” “standby” and “quiet on the set” ringing through the room.

A forest of cameras trained on a string of sharply dressed young people vying for a panel of judges’ approval and for the public’s votes. 

But the competitors weren't trying to prove they were skilled singers and dancers. The earnest performers were hoping to win something much more serious – they were fighting to become "The President" as part of a reality TV show.

Of course the winner, to be chosen on June 25, won’t become a real head of state. But he or she -- plus three runners-up -- will be named unofficial youth envoys to three European countries and Russia. They will also get the opportunity to shadow a Palestinian Authority minister. 

Chosen from over 1,000 young hopefuls from the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Israel, the contestants are put through their intellectual and rhetorical paces by a five-person panel of judges made up of the cream of Palestinian and Arab-Israeli society. 

Sewar Salman, who is one of 13 remaining contestants, shares her political ideas freely.

“If negotiations (with Israel) don’t work, as 'The President' it is my right to achieve a Palestinian state through resistance,” said the 21-year-old from Halhul, a town near the West Bank city of Hebron.

A Palestinian state isn’t the only thing on the communications student’s mind – she has some choice words for her elders as well. 

“We don’t need the old generation. We need (leaders) who understand what young people need,” said Salman. “We believe we are able to change society more than anyone else.” 

Young Palestinians like Salman could be forgiven for having lost faith in their political system. Youth unemployment remains stubbornly high and an independent state remains little more than a dream.

The show, run by non-governmental organization Search for Common Ground and Palestinian Ma’an Network, an independent non-profit media organization, was launched in March, and comes at a tricky time for Palestinian leaders.

On April 13, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad quit amid rumors of a power struggle at the top of the ruling Palestinian Authority. Meanwhile, there have been reports that an agreement between rival factions, including relatively secular Fatah and the militant group Hamas that runs the Gaza Strip, have come to nothing. 

The director of the show, Adham Hosari, says the whole point is to involve young Palestinians in the political process.

“The young generation is marginalized politically, and they have the chance to choose a new president,” he said. 

Hosari said the show had achieved high ratings, although he and others at the network were unable to provide numbers.

“The final material prize is not important,” Hosari said. “We want the people to know about the problems the Palestinians are facing politically and socially.”

But while the show emphasizes youth and purports to call for the overhaul of the country’s establishment, the judges are themselves drawn from the upper echelons of the Palestinian establishment. They include legislator Hanan Ashrawi and parliamentarian Ahmad Tibi.

And in another nod to the Palestinian political class, the five-person committee gets 75 percent of the deciding votes, while the television audience only the remaining 25 percent. 

Nonetheless, the feeling in the ballroom in Ramallah is that the contestants battling each other are the future leaders of their people, and the current leadership would be wise to listen to what they have to say. 

Indeed, Salman says her life has been transformed by participating in the show, and cannot walk down the street in her traditionally conservative community without being recognized -- and encouraged. 

She recounted a recent conversation with an elderly bookseller: “'Please win, win for us, just be The President’, he told me.”

Related stories:

• Obama appeals to Israelis: Give justice to the Palestinians
• Qatar PM: Arab states open to mutually agreed Palestinian-Israeli land swaps
• First ever Palestinian marathon: Running to change West Bank's image

NEWS ANALYSIS

ANTAKYA, Turkey -- War makes strange bedfellows. President Bashar Assad’s regime is in the unique position of being targeted both by Israel and supporters of al Qaeda.

It is hard to imagine more a diverse couple: Sworn enemies fighting against the same government.

Israel carried out a series of attacks on military targets in Damascus early Sunday, close to President Assad’s main compound, US officials told NBC News. A rebel spokesman said about 10 locations had been hit, adding: “They shook all of Damascus. There was still smoke in the air as the sun came up.”

Witnesses said they heard low-flying jets in the air, but only after the explosions began.  Witnesses also claim to have heard jets in Lebanon shortly before the raid.  Israel has not confirmed it carried out any attack.

Syrian state TV blamed Israel, and said it was helping the rebels it calls terrorists.

An Israeli source said Sunday’s targets included Iranian-made missiles bound for Hezbollah.

The rebel spokesman in Damascus said the rebels’ “spirits were lifted” by the pre-dawn raid, and that they resumed “intense attacks” on the regime in the capital on Sunday morning.

While there is no evidence that Israel is coordinating with the Syrian opposition, both are worried about what could happen as the civil war spins further out of control.

Israel specifically does not want Syria to hand over weapons, chemical or conventional, to Hezbollah.

Both Hezbollah – which is based in Lebanon, just north of Israel - and Iran are allies of Bashar Assad.

Israel and Hezbollah fought a bloody war in 2006.  But Israel doesn’t fully back the rebels either, especially not a powerful contingent of Islamic radicals. 

Israel does not want the Nusra front, which has pledged allegiance to al Qaeda, to obtain chemical weapons.  Neither does Washington.  Israel’s strategy thus far appears to be targeting threats as they come up and picking them off. 

If Israel sees weapons moving toward its border, it acts.  But many across the region are now wondering if this raid, larger in scale, is the start of a more active Israeli military role.  Has Israel decided that the longer the conflict drags on, the more risks there are regional stability?  Was this another surgical strike or the start of a new policy?  The answer may become clear in the coming days.

Related video: Syrian government used chemical weapons 4 times, rebels say

The Arab League is open to the possibility of "mutually agreed" land swaps to help find a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Qatar’s prime minister said on Monday.

The statement by Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani came after meetings between Arab League representatives and Secretary of State John Kerry in Washington. Vice President Joe Biden also sat in on some of the discussions.

A major sticking point remains, however, in that the Qatari prime minister also said any new borders drawn should be based on the ones that existed in June 1967, before Israel’s Six-Day War claimed more land.

“The Arab League delegation affirmed the agreement should be based on the two-state solution on the basis of the fourth of June 1967 lines, with the [possibility] of comparable and mutually agreed minor swap of land," he said.

The borders have been a point of contention ever since, and Israel has repeatedly rejected the idea of giving up seized land.

But Monday’s language appeared more conciliatory with mentions of any land swaps being agreed upon and the prime minister’s call for “a joint justice and peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis.”

Kerry described the meetings as “very positive, very constructive discussions … with positive results.”

The foreign ministers of Bahrain, Jordan and Egypt were present, as were representatives of Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority. Hamad serves as both prime minster and foreign minister of Qatar.

Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, speaking on Israel’s Army Radio, applauded Hamad’s comments, Reuters reported.

“The news is very positive,” the service quoted Livni as saying. “In the tumultuous world around … it could allow the Palestinians to enter the room and make the needed compromises, and it sends a message to the Israeli public that this is not just about us and the Palestinians.”

Kerry and the delegates also discussed Syria on Monday with United Nations peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi.

A State Department official said they discussed “assistance to the Syria opposition, including our support to the SMC [Supreme Military Council], and the ongoing efforts to help consolidate moderate elements of the opposition.”

Speaking on behalf of the Arab League, Hamad said, “I think all of us” support the Syrian opposition’s April 20 declaration in Istanbul, which said the rebels would work toward a a free and democratic Syria with “no room for sectarianism or discrimination on ethnic, religious, linguistic or any other grounds.”

Related:

Palestinians, Israelis lukewarm over Obama visit

A bet on peace: Qatar funds West Bank settlement

New interest in old Middle East peace plan

Syrian Prime Minister Wael al-Halki survived a bomb attack on his convoy in Damascus on Monday, state media and activists said, as rebels struck in the heart of President Bashar Assad's capital.

Six people were killed in the blast, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, the latest in a series of rebel attacks on government targets including a December bombing that wounded Assad's interior minister.

Halki wields little power, but the attack highlighted the rebels' growing ability to target symbols of Assad's authority in a civil war that has cost more than 70,000 lives, according to the United Nations.

AP

This photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA shows firefighters extinguishing burning cars after a blast in the Mazzeh neighborhood of Damascus, Syria, on Monday.

Assad picked Halki in August to replace Riyadh Hijab, who defected and escaped to neighboring Jordan just weeks after a Damascus bombing killed four of the president's top security advisers.

In comments released by the state news agency SANA but not shown on television, Halki was quoted as condemning the attack as a sign of "bankruptcy and failure of the terrorist groups," a reference to the rebels battling to overthrow Assad.

The blast shook the Mezze district soon after 9 a.m. local time (2 a.m. ET) and sent thick black smoke into the sky. The Observatory said one man accompanying Halki was killed as well as five passers-by.

State television showed firemen hosing down the charred and mangled remains of a car. Nearby was a large white bus, its windows blown out and its seats gutted by fire. Glass and debris were scattered across several lanes of a main road.

"The terrorist explosion in al-Mezze was an attempt to target the convoy of the prime minister. Doctor Wael al-Halki is well and not hurt at all," state television said.

It later broadcast footage of Halki, who appeared composed and unruffled, chairing what it said was an economic committee.

Mezze is part of a shrinking "Square of Security" in central Damascus, where many government and military institutions are based and where senior Syrian officials live.

Sheltered for nearly two years from the bloodshed and destruction ravaging much of the rest of Syria, it has been slowly sucked into violence as rebel forces based to the east of the capital launch mortar attacks and carry out bombings in the center.

Related:

• Fighting reported near suspected chemical weapons site in Syria
• Obama reiterates chemical weapons would be 'game-changer'
• Inside a Syrian city split between rival militias

This story was originally published on Mon Apr 29, 2013 4:37 AM EDT

DUBAI -- A driver opened fire on a car driven by a U.S. citizen in northern Saudi Arabia after crashing into his vehicle, but there were no casualties, Saudi state news agency SPA reported late on Wednesday.

It was not immediately clear if the incident was a deliberate attack on the American or just a case of road rage.

"The Tabuk police received a report at around 1 p.m. (6 a.m. ET) that a car driven by a resident American citizen had been subjected to a crash and shooting from the driver of the other vehicle while driving on a road in the city of Tabuk," SPA quoted the local police chief as saying.

"There were no injuries but the car was damaged by the accident and shooting," it added.

The kingdom, a key regional U.S. ally and the world's top oil exporter, faced a campaign of attacks by al Qaeda militants targeting foreigners and government facilities between 2003 and 2006. Security forces crushed the militants, arresting and killing many and forcing others to flee the kingdom.

BEIRUT -- Two Syrian bishops kidnapped by gunmen on Monday are still missing, church sources in Damascus and Aleppo said on Wednesday, contradicting a report that the men had been freed.

A source at the Syriac Orthodox Archdiocese of Aleppo said the bishops had not been released and he was unaware of any contact with their abductors. At the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Damascus, a source also said there was no indication they had been freed.

Greek Orthodox archbishop Paul Yazigi and Syriac Orthodox archbishop Yohanna Ibrahim were seized near the northern commercial and industrial hub of Aleppo, which is contested by rebels and forces loyal to President Bashar Assad.

Authorities blamed the abduction on a "terrorist group", the label they usually give to anti-Assad rebels, but opposition fighters in the province denied they had kidnapped the two and said they were working for their release and trying to find out who had taken them.

The bishops were the most senior church figures caught up in the fight between Assad's forces and rebels trying to end four decades of family rule by Assad and his late father.

The conflict has killed more than 70,000 people and frightened minority groups as the mainly Sunni Muslim rebels gain ground in northern Syria, where Salafi and jihadi groups, including the al Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front, have emerged as among the most formidable insurgent formations.

Slideshow: Syria uprising

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A look back at the conflict that has overtaken the country.

Launch slideshow

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• Full Syria coverage from NBC News