The United States on Thursday acknowledged providing communications equipment and other forms of assistance to members of the "peaceful opposition" in Syria.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the aid is part of "non-lethal" assistance to Syrians living under President Bashar Assad's regime, and part of a global effort to support Internet freedom.

Egypt's ruling military council said on Thursday that a presidential run-off election will go ahead as scheduled on June 16 and 17, after a court rejected a law barring one of the candidates.

"The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces has assured that the presidential run-off will take place on schedule on Saturday and Sunday," the official MENA news agency said.

The United States said Thursday it was "deeply disappointed" by a court decision in Bahrain that upheld sentences for some medics involved in protests against the U.S.-allied Sunni regime last year.

Bahrain's appeals court acquitted nine medics arrested at a hospital near the protests and reduced the terms of nine others. But State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that charges on all should be dropped.

The United States voiced hope Thursday that Egypt would preserve a "democratic" government after the country's top court paved the way for the military to assume parliament's powers.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that the United States was still studying the ruling and would not comment on it directly but voiced hope that Egyptians would enjoy the gains from last year's revolution.

Seventeen Egyptian human rights organizations said on Thursday they are challenging a justice ministry order granting army personnel the right to arrest civilians, saying it had "no basis in law."

"The decision creates extraordinary powers that have no basis in law," the groups said, describing the order as "a blatant circumvention of the official end of the state of emergency."

A senior leader of the Muslim Brotherhood's political arm in Egypt on Thursday said a court's ruling that parliament was unconstitutional was a "military coup," in a statement on his Facebook page.

A series of measures, including giving the military powers of arrests, and then the court ruling were "a complete coup through which the military council erases the most honorable period in this nation's history," said Mohammed al-Beltagi.

British foreign minister William Hague Thursday urged Russia and Iran to use their influence over Syria to achieve a peaceful end to the bloody 15-month uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.

Hague met his Russian and Iranian counterparts in Kabul on the sidelines of a conference on the future of Afghanistan and stressed the need for the implementation of a peace plan proposed by international peace envoy Kofi Annan.

Libya's Supreme Court on Thursday struck down as "unconstitutional" a law passed at the start of May that banned glorification of slain leader Moammar Gadhafi.

"In the name of the people, the court has decided on the unconstitutionality of Law No 37," the head of the court's constitutional chamber announced at a brief hearing.

Iran on Thursday said it arrested a number of chief suspects in the assassinations of two of its nuclear scientists in the past two years, and claimed they were linked to Israel.

A statement from the intelligence ministry, published by state media, said "the main elements behind the killings... were arrested and moved to detention" following an investigation of at least 18 months involving surveillance in Iran and abroad.

Syrian opposition groups are to meet in a bid to settle their differences, as the violence in their country threatens to descend into civil war, sources among the groups said Thursday.