The international Red Cross on Thursday demanded that Hamas show proof that Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, captured five years ago, remains alive.

"Because there has been no sign of life from Mr. Shalit for almost two years, the ICRC is now demanding that Hamas prove that he is alive," said the International Committee of the Red Cross in a statement.

Activists called for a general strike across Syria on Thursday, which marks the 100th day since protests against the autocratic rule of President Bashar Assad first erupted.

The Facebook group Syrian Revolution 2011 posted the call to strike as a "sign of mourning" for those killed in a country-wide military crackdown on the opposition movement.

An Egyptian accused of spying for Israel was sentenced on Thursday to 25 years in jail by a special court.

Cairo's supreme state security court found Tarek Abdel Razek, who was arrested last year, and two Israeli officers guilty of "acts of espionage" on Israel's behalf.

Top U.S. official Jeffrey Feltman called Thursday for an "immediate" transfer of power in Yemen after he met the Arab nation's Vice President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi, in comments to reporters in Sanaa.

"We continue to believe that an immediate, peaceful, and orderly transition is in the best interest of the Yemeni people," said Feltman, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs.

Kuwait's premier on Thursday comfortably survived a parliament vote called by the opposition in a bid to oust him over allegations he boosted ties with Iran rather than Gulf Arab states, the parliament speaker announced.

Only 18 MPs voted for the motion, seven votes short of the required number to unseat Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Mohammad al-Ahmad al-Sabah, speaker Jassem al-Khorafi said after a secret session.

Hundreds of displaced Syrians poured into Turkey on Thursday after Syrian troops backed by tanks approached their makeshift camps along the border, an Agence France Presse journalist reported.

Several hundred people broke through the barbed wire marking the frontier between the two countries and were seen advancing into Turkish territory on a road used by Turkish border guards, a few kilometers from the Turkish village of Guvecci.

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi issued a defiant audio message late Wednesday saying he had his "back to the wall" but did not fear death, and the battle against the Western "crusaders" would continue "to the beyond."

"We will resist and the battle will continue to the beyond, until you're wiped out. But we will not be finished," Gadhafi said in the message broadcast on Libyan television in homage to his comrade Khuwildi Hemidi, several members of whose family were killed Monday in NATO raids on his residence.

Bomb and gun attacks in Baghdad and northern Iraq on Wednesday killed five people and wounded 36, 15 of them policemen, officials said.

A car bomb in the al-Ghazaliyah district of west Baghdad killed one civilian and wounded nine people, three of them policemen, an officer said.

The United States voiced concern Wednesday over a ruling by a Bahraini court to sentence eight Shiite opposition activists to life in prison.

"We are concerned about the severity of the sentences handed down... in Bahrain. We're also concerned about the use of military courts to try these civilians," State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner told reporters.

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood has joined forces with 17 other parties, including liberals and leftists, to form a common platform for parliamentary elections, as it seeks to allay fears among secular groups and the country's Christian minority.

In a meeting on Tuesday, the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, the liberal Wafd party, the left-leaning Tagammu and the Noor party, newly formed by Salafist Muslim hardliners, said they would "channel their efforts ... into building a state of law based on citizenship, equality and sovereignty of the people."