Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Thursday for sanctions to be imposed on Iran's oil and banking sectors to put pressure on it to rein in its controversial nuclear program.

"It is very important that significant economic sanctions were imposed, but that is not enough," he said at a joint press conference with his Romanian counterpart Emil Boc.

Kuwait on Thursday remanded in custody 24 opposition activists pending further investigation on charges they stormed the parliament building last week, their lawyer said.

"After interrogation all night, the public prosecutor this morning remanded them in police custody until Thursday night when questioning will resume," said Al-Humaidi al-Subaie, coordinator of the opposition defense team.

Three bombs exploded Thursday in the south Iraq port city of Basra, killing 19 people, including high-ranking army and police officers, and wounding at least 65, security and medical officials said.

A roadside bomb and a motorcycle bomb exploded simultaneously at about 6:40 pm (1540 GMT) in a market in central Basra, an interior ministry official said.

An Egyptian court has decided to release three Americans arrested during protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square, pending an investigation, the official MENA news agency reported Thursday.

On Wednesday, the prosecutor general ordered the three students of the American University in Cairo be detained for four days.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's time as president is all but up as he pursues a bloody crackdown on dissidents, Israeli deputy prime minister Moshe Ya'alon said Thursday.

"It seems that he's approaching his end as leader of Syria," Ya'alon said after meeting Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg of the Czech Republic, a country that is a traditional Israeli ally.

Morocco prepares for an election Friday likely to see a strong showing by a moderate Islamist party, but the poll risks being marred by low turnout with a pro-reform movement calling for a boycott.

The polls are the first since a new constitution, proposed by King Mohammed VI as regimes in nearby countries were being swept away in the Arab Spring uprisings, was overwhelmingly approved in a July 1 referendum.

Free Syrian Army chief Riad al-Asaad on Thursday called for foreign air strikes on "strategic targets" in Syria to speed up the fall of the regime, in a telephone interview with Agence France Presse.

"We are not in favor of the entry of foreign troops as was the case in Iraq but we want the international community to give us logistical support," said FSA chief Colonel Asaad, who is based across the border in Turkey.

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh ordered a probe after his loyalists killed five people in Sanaa on Thursday, a day after he signed a deal to immediately hand all "necessary" powers to his deputy.

Saleh, condemning the violence, "ordered the interior ministry to carry out a full investigation" and "bring those responsible for this crime to justice, whatever party they belong to," the state Saba news agency reported.

The Arab League on Thursday served a new ultimatum on Damascus, giving it less than 24 hours to allow monitors into the country or face sanctions, while for the first time calling on the United Nations to help resolve the crisis.

The ultimatum, issued at the end of a crisis meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo, came amid an explosion of violence in Syria in which 32 people died, including 11 security force members and seven military pilots.

Members of Egypt's ruling military council on Thursday rejected calls to step down immediately, saying it would amount to a "betrayal" as anti-military protests entered their seventh day.

"The people have entrusted us with a mission and if we abandon it now, it would be a betrayal of the people," said General Mukthar al-Mulla, a member of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces which took power when veteran president Hosni Mubarak was ousted in February.