4.14pm GMT

Here's a summary of today's main events:

Syria

• President Bashar al-Assad's forces have resumed firing Scud missiles at rebel positions, according to Nato, US officials and activists. Nato's secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said it was "the act of a desperate regime approaching collapse." He also claimed it justified Nato's decision to deploy Patriot missiles on the Turkish Syria border.

• Germany's defence minister has become the latest figure to predict the imminent collapse of the Assad regime. Thomas de Maiziere told Bild that "there are signs that the opposition will soon achieve a military victory against the regime".

• Syrian rebels fired warning shots at an airliner preparing to take off from Aleppo airport in the first direct attack on a civilian flight since the uprising began. Rebels were also reported to have won more territory in Hama province and to have surrounded an Alawite town inflaming already raw sectarian tensions.

• The wife of British doctor who went missing in Aleppo last month, has made an appeal for his release. Hanaa Yehia said her husband, Abbas Khan, travelled to Syria to use his medical training to help the worsening humanitarian crisis. "We plead with his captors to treat him well and expedite his release and return him to his loving family who cherish his extraordinary selflessness," she said.

• The UN's anti-genocide envoy warned that minority groups in Syria, including Assad's fellow Alawites, are at risk of major reprisal attacks as sectarian violence increases. "I am deeply concerned that entire communities risk paying the price for crimes committed by the Syrian government," Adama Dieng, UN special adviser on the prevention of genocide, said in a statement. In a report, UN human rights investigators said that Syria's conflict was becoming more sectarian, with more civilians seeking to arm themselves and foreign fighters – mostly Sunnis – flocking in from 29 countries.

Egypt

• Thousands of Islamists have clashed with anti-government protesters in Alexandria, ahead of the second leg of the referendum. The two sides hurled rocks and stones at each other in the Mediterranean port city, prompting police to fire tear gas to separate them.