Turkey's foreign minister said on Thursday that Turkish authorities were conducting blood tests on wounded Syrian refugees to assess whether their injuries had been caused by chemical weapons.

"We will keep on carrying out tests on each and every injured Syrian," who has fled to Turkey, Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters in Ankara.

Israeli "segregation policies" have caused deep economic isolation and left more than 80 percent of Palestinian children in east Jerusalem wallowing in poverty, the U.N. said in a report published Thursday.

"Palestinian poverty in Jerusalem has risen steadily over the last decade," the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said in a statement.

Moroccan customs authorities on Thursday incinerated 9.5 tonnes of cannabis resin in a suburb of Casablanca, official media reported, days after record hashish hauls in neighboring Spain.

The drugs, which were seized in two separate operations last year by customs authorities at Casablanca port, were burned in the presence of government officials, police and members of the royal gendarmerie, the MAP news agency reported.

The threat Islamist militants posed to Tunisia under ousted dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was worse than the current threat, the ruling Islamist party Ennahda's leader Rached Ghannouchi said on Thursday.

"What happened in Soliman and Rouhia was worse than what is currently happening in Mont Chaambi, even if it is a massive crime," he told a news conference.

Fighting raged on Thursday in flashpoints across Syria, among them Barzeh in northern Damascus, a watchdog said.

Southwest of Damascus, the regime's air force bombarded rebel positions located between rebel strongholds Daraya and Moadamiyet al-Sham, which the regime has been fighting to reclaim since last year, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Syria on Thursday welcomed a U.S.-Russian initiative to find a political solution to its conflict, counting on ally Moscow to stand firm, even as Washington said President Bashar Assad would have to step down.

U.S. Secretary John Kerry, who announced the initiative earlier this week, said the embattled president would have to step down as part of the resolution to the conflict.

An American was stabbed in the neck as he came out of the U.S. embassy in central Cairo on Thursday, a security official told Agence France Presse.

The American was rushed to hospital after the attack in Cairo's Garden City neighborhood near Tahrir Square, which houses several embassies and has seen a rise in crime and unrest in recent months.

Former president Mohammad Khatami has expressed doubts about running in Iran's presidential election on June 14, saying his participation could weaken the reformist movement, local media reported on Thursday.

Khatami, reformist head of state from 1997 to 2005, and his predecessor, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, moderate president from 1989 to 1997, have yet to decide whether to contest the polls to succeed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Israel on Thursday formally apologized to Cairo after police violence against Egyptian diplomats during the Holy Fire ceremony at Jerusalem's Holy Sepulcher church on Orthodox Easter.

"I presented on our behalf a formal apology during a meeting with an Egyptian diplomat because in incidents like this it is good to lower the flames," Deputy Foreign Minister Zeev Elkin told public radio.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has proposed classing Syria's powerful jihadist group Al-Nusra Front a terrorist organisation, while boosting support for the moderate opposition.

"We are going to increase our support to the moderate opposition, the National Syrian Coalition," Fabius said in Friday's edition of Le Monde newspaper.