The United States said Thursday Turkey had taken "appropriate" and "proportional" action in firing back at Syria after a deadly cross-border shelling, but urged that tensions should not escalate.

"From our perspective, the response that Turkey made was appropriate," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said, adding Ankara had long made it clear that it would respond to any violation of its territory.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Thursday his country has no intention of going to war with Syria, hours after the parliament in Ankara authorized possible cross-border attacks, as Damascus said it was not seeking "escalation."

"We have no intention of starting a war with Syria," Erdogan said at a press conference amid anger over Syrian shelling that killed five Turkish nationals in a town that borders Syria.

More than 100 angry Libyans stormed the General National Congress on Thursday, protesting over the lack of representation of a western town in a proposed new cabinet line-up.

The demonstrators, who were unarmed, barged their way into the GNC to air their grievances to representatives of the legislative assembly, the first elected authority after four decades under slain strongman Moammar Gadhafi, witnesses said.

Jordan's King Abdullah II dissolved parliament and called early elections on Thursday, the royal palace announced on the eve of a major rally by the Islamist opposition to demand reforms.

"The king has decided to dissolve the chamber of deputies from this Thursday and to call early elections," a statement said. It gave no date, but the monarch has said he wants polls to be held by the end of 2012.

The U.S. State Department on Thursday added the Yemeni Islamist group Ansar al-Sharia (AAS) to its list of terror organizations, saying it is an offshoot of Al-Qaida in the Arabian peninsula (AQAP).

"AAS is simply AQAP's effort to rebrand itself, with the aim of manipulating people to join AQAP's terrorist cause," the State Department said in a statement.

Thousands of Christian pilgrims from around the world marched through the streets of Jerusalem on Thursday alongside Israeli soldiers and workers, in an annual show of solidarity with the Jewish state.

A spokesman for the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ) said about 5,000 pilgrims from around 90 countries took part, out of a total participation that Israeli officials estimated at about 25,000.

Russian objections to a draft U.N. statement condemning Syria's deadly shelling of Turkey sent the Security Council back into consultations, diplomats said Thursday.

The draft had been expected to be approved by a "silence procedure" -- the text is considered adopted if no country objects -- but "the Russians broke the silence," Britain ambassador Mark Lyall Grant told reporters.

An Egyptian court on Thursday ordered the release of two Coptic Christian children accused of insulting Islam, a source in the prosecutor's office said.

He told AFP that prosecutor Abdel Meguid Mahmud took the decision because the accused, aged nine and 10, are minors, but the source did not specify if the charges were dropped.

A team of U.S. investigators visited Libya's second city Benghazi on Thursday to examine the site where Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed in an attack last month.

"An American investigative committee visited the site where the U.S. ambassador was killed," a defense ministry official in Benghazi told Agence France Presse, confirming that the team included FBI agents.

A demonstration in support of Jordan's King Abdullah II has been called off over fears of unrest as it coincides with a pro-reform rally by the Islamist opposition on Friday, organizers said.

"We have postponed indefinitely our demonstration scheduled at the same time as the Muslim Brotherhood's to avoid any problems," said Jihad al-Sheik, head of an Internet-based youth group that organized the event.