A torrent of heavy mortar and machinegun fire killed at least four people in and around Homs, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported, a day after nearly 100 people died across the country.

Streaming video from Homs on the bambuser.com website showed smoke billowing from a residential district as the staccato of automatic gunfire was punctuated by the thud of mortar blasts.

The Arab League demanded on Thursday that Russia stop supplying arms to Syria, as a regime onslaught of Homs and its surrounds appeared to stall a Red Cross bid to rescue trapped civilians.

The pan-Arab bloc's deputy secretary general Ahmed Ben Hilli issued the appeal in an interview in which he also called for U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan's mandate to be revamped, and for Iran's inclusion in talks on Syria.

The results of Egypt's presidential election that were scheduled to be announced on Thursday have been delayed, state media reported.

"Egypt's election commission, headed by Judge Faruq Sultan... has decided to delay the announcement of the presidential election run-off," the official MENA news agency said, without giving a new date.

Israel's state watchdog on Wednesday criticized a number of cabinet members in a report on the country's worst ever fire that killed 44 people as it swept through a northern forest in late 2010.

The fire raged through the Carmel forest near the Mediterranean port city of Haifa for four days, destroying millions of trees and hundreds of homes.

Thirty suspected militants were killed as Yemeni aircraft pounded al-Qaida positions between the southern provinces of Abyan and Shabwa on Wednesday, a local official told AFP.

Algerian troops killed eight Islamists militants in the Kabylie region, where al-Qaida-linked groups remain active, the official APS agency reported Wednesday, updating an earlier toll of six.

Turkish warplanes bombed Kurdish rebel hideouts in northern Iraq in retaliation for a deadly attack in Turkey's southeast, the military said Wednesday.

The strikes come after rebels on Tuesday attacked Turkish military units in the town of Yuksekova in Hakkari province near the Iraqi border. The fighting between Turkish soldiers and rebels claimed 34 lives.

The Red Cross said Wednesday it will try to evacuate hundreds of civilians trapped by fierce fighting in and around the restive city of Homs, as violence killed dozens of people across Syria.

The head of the U.N. Supervision Mission in Syria, meanwhile, told the U.N. Security Council of the intensifying violence in the country but said the nearly 300 unarmed monitors were "morally obliged" to stay.

Kuwait's constitutional court on Wednesday declared February's legislative polls in which the opposition swept to victory illegal and reinstated the previous pro-government parliament, state media said.

Leading opposition MP Mussallam al-Barrak described the verdict as "a coup against the constitution" and called for the opposition to take a united stand.

King Abdullah II of Jordan, whose country borders Syria and hosts a large number of refugees, expressed concern Wednesday about the implications of the Syrian crisis for the region as a whole.

"The window for a solution is narrowing and all should be on the alert to prevent the crisis from sliding into a civil war," the king told pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat.