Israel said its warplanes killed a senior jihadist militant on Friday, two days after announcing it was weighing a wider campaign in the territory to curb a boost in rocket attacks.

Israel's military identified the man killed as a "senior operative in the global jihad movement" who was involved in planning an attack from Egypt.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman said that the Arab observers should be given “some time” to monitor Syria’s implementation of its obligations stated in the Arab protocol.

“If the (observers’ report) was negative, then the international community will have to weigh its options in order to stop the violence,” Feltman said in an interview with An Nahar newspaper on Friday.

The U.S. State Department said Congress has released $40 million in aid to the Palestinians, part of the nearly $200 million that was frozen over their bid for full U.N. recognition.

"We have been working with Congress for some time, because we don't think it's in U.S. national interests to keep this money frozen," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters, saying U.S. diplomats were "gratified" by the move.

Gaza's Hamas premier Ismail Haniya held talks with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir Thursday on his first official regional tour since the Islamists' 2007 power seizure in the Palestinian enclave.

Haniya, who arrived in Khartoum on Tuesday, was joined in the meeting by other high-ranking Hamas leaders -- the first time they had met as a group with Bashir, whose country has close ties with Hamas.

The United States said Thursday it had sent a "strong message" to the Gulf region, as tensions rise with Iran, by signing a $29.4 billion deal to provide F-15 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia.

The deal, which was signed over the weekend, will supply 84 new Boeing F-15SA aircraft and modernize 70 existing planes and include munitions, spare parts, training and maintenance contracts, U.S. officials said.

A criminal court in Cairo on Thursday acquitted five police officers who had been charged in connection with the deaths of protesters during the popular uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak.

The officers had been accused of killing six demonstrators near a police station in the Sayeda Zeinab neighborhood of central Cairo, a judicial source said.

U.S. officials suspect that Yemen fed them false intelligence for a 2010 strike against al-Qaida suspects that killed a local leader locked in a dispute with the president's family, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

The disclosure of such an incident would complicate relations between the two allies at a time when Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh is seeking to visit the United States amid months of popular protests demanding his ouster.

The Bahraini authorities announced on Thursday that five police officers accused over the death by torture of two detainees, linked to anti-regime protests earlier this year, would face trial next month.

Public Prosecutor Nawaf Abdullah Hamza was quoted by the official Bahrain News Agency as saying that after examining allegations by the interior ministry of cases of torture and ill treatment, his office had decided to refer one case to the criminal court.

China on Thursday expressed its support for Arab monitors in protest-hit Syria, after France charged the team had not been allowed to see what was happening in a flashpoint town.

China is a key Syrian ally, and along with Russia has used its veto on the U.N. Security Council to block a Western-backed resolution condemning Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Egyptian police raided more than a dozen offices belonging to local and foreign rights groups on Thursday, as part of an investigation into alleged illicit foreign funding, an official statement said, drawing sharp criticism from Washington.

At least two U.S. rights groups -- the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI) -- are being targeted by the operation, judicial sources said.