The U.N. Security Council on Thursday ordered the withdrawal of U.N. observers in Syria, while Russia called for international powers to set a deadline for government and opposition forces to halt the conflict.

The 15-member Security Council decided not to renew the mandate of the U.N. Supervision Mission in Syria (UNSMIS) which ends at midnight on Sunday.

Syria's embattled President Bashar Assad issued a surprise decree Thursday appointing three new ministers, state television said, in a reshuffle following the defection of his former premier.

It said Saad Assalam al-Nayef was appointed health minister, replacing Wael al-Halqi, who became prime minister a week ago after his predecessor defected to join the rebellion.

"We have carried out 800 open-heart surgeries, regulated traffic, and built 44 schools," billboards boldly proclaim in white letters on a vibrant magenta background.

Not the proud boast of a Scandinavian country, but a publicity campaign undertaken by the Gaza Strip's Hamas government, which has plastered news of its achievements at road junctions, in the across newspapers, on the Internet and even on the radio.

China's Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi urged a visiting Syrian envoy on Thursday to implement a ceasefire and accept international mediation to end the violence wracking the country.

"China urges the Syrian government and all concerned parties... to quickly implement a ceasefire to end the violence and start political dialogue," Yang told Bouthaina Shaaban, according to a government statement.

Israel is an artificial "outgrowth" in the Middle East that "will disappear," Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said ahead of rallies on Friday against the Jewish state and supporting the Palestinians.

The annual Quds Day marches were started in 1979 after the founding of the Islamic republic. The protests use the word Quds, derived from Arabic, to designate the city of Jerusalem.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Thursday Syrian President Bashar Assad was "butchering his own people" and that the sooner he leaves the better.

"France's position is clear: we consider Assad to be butchering his own people. He must leave, and the sooner he goes the better," Fabius told reporters at the Zaatari refugee camp, which houses around 6,000 Syrians in northern Jordan.

The Syrian army pummeled districts across the embattled northern city of Aleppo on Thursday, leaving 18 civilians dead, while eight soldiers died in clashes with rebels, a watchdog said.

The violence, which nationwide left 34 dead so far on Thursday, followed a bloody day in which at least 172 people were killed across Syria including in an air strike in the northern town of Aazaz, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Iran on Thursday slammed a decision by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to suspend Syria's membership, calling the step against its key ally "unfair and unjust."

"Syria should have been invited to the summit to defend itself," Iran's foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi told the official IRNA news agency in the holy Muslim city of Mecca.

Turkish warplanes bombed areas of north Iraq in a bid to target rear bases of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) overnight into Thursday, a spokesman for the rebel group said.

"Turkish warplanes struck around midnight against several areas in the Kurdish Iraqi area," Haval Roz told Agence France Presse.

A wave of attacks across Iraq on Thursday killed at least 19 people, as an analyst warned of a potential escalation in violence to coincide with the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

Officials reported more than 100 people were wounded in 15 explosions, including seven car bombs, a suicide attack, and a shooting, in nine cities and towns nationwide, a day after attacks left 13 people dead.