U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon on Thursday condemned the killing of a Syrian Red Crescent chief and demanded the Damascus government investigate the crime.

Ban is "deeply concerned" at the killing of Abdelrazak Jbeiro, the Syrian Red Crescent secretary general, who was ambushed Wednesday while driving in the restive northwest province of Idlib, said U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky.

Libyan's regular army and array of militias have been torturing loyalists of slain dictator Moammar Gadhafi, several of whom have been killed in custody, human rights groups charged on Thursday.

Amnesty International said that despite promises, Libya's new rulers have made "no progress to stop the use of torture", as Doctors Without Borders suspended its work in the third-largest city Misrata over similar claims.

A Syrian opposition figure on Thursday called on the Arab League to hold talks with Russia before turning to the United Nations for intervention in the Syria crisis.

"We hope to see Arab League Secretary General Nabil al-Arabi head to Moscow before New York," said Haitham Mannaa of the Syrian National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change, the second largest coalition after the Syrian National Council.

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said on Thursday the Palestinians' announcement that they were ending informal talks with Israel does not mean the two sides have reached an "impasse."

"I do not think there is an impasse. I know that President (Mahmoud) Abbas is thinking carefully about how to move forward. For him the meeting of the Arab (League) Follow up Committee in Cairo is extremely important," Ashton told reporters after meeting with Abbas in Amman.

Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi and Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani are to head to New York on Saturday to seek support for an Arab plan on Syria, Arabi said.

The two will "hold a meeting with the U.N. Security Council on Monday to seek ratification of the Arab League decision on Syria," for President Bashar Assad to hand power to his deputy, Arabi said.

A Bahraini protester detained following clashes with police in a Shiite village has died in hospital, police said on Thursday, as the opposition accused security forces of running him over.

An Interior Ministry statement posted on Twitter said that police arrested the man in the Gulf kingdom's central governorate on Tuesday "over acts of vandalism in the area of Sitra".

A Jordanian political activist was sentenced on Thursday to two years in prison for undermining King Abdullah II's dignity, after he set alight a picture of the monarch this month.

"The (military) state security court sentenced Uday Abu Issa, 18, to two years in jail. He has been found guilty of undermining the king's dignity," a judicial official told Agence France Presse.

An Iranian U.S.-manufactured F-14 fighter jet crashed early on Thursday minutes after takeoff killing both crew, the Fars news agency reported.

"The pilot and the co-pilot of an F-14 plane that crashed this morning have been martyred," the news agency quoted the governor of Bushehr province on the Gulf coast, Jafar Pourkabgani, as saying.

Syrian security forces killed 49 civilians, including 10 children, in clashes across the country on Thursday, a rights group said.

"The toll for the day has risen to 49 civilians killed by the security forces in several regions of Syria, mostly in Homs," in the centre of the country, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Kuwait's public prosecutor has ordered 61 stateless men be detained for three weeks pending a probe into their alleged involvement in protests that turned violent, their lawyer said Thursday.

The men were arrested in mid-January when riot police cracked down on thousands of stateless protesters who were demanding the right to Kuwaiti citizenship and a host of basic rights.