Egypt's ousted president Hosni Mubarak was transferred to a Cairo military hospital on Wednesday, after slipping and injuring his head and chest in prison, a security official said.

For months, there have been conflicting reports about the health of the 84-year old Mubarak, who was sentenced in June to life in prison for failing to stop the killing of hundreds of protesters during last year's uprising. He is the first Arab president to serve a prison sentence.

French President Francois Hollande said on Wednesday that he had not come to Algeria to offer "apologies" for crimes committed during the colonial period.

"I have not come here... to offer repentance or apologies. I have come to say what is true," Hollande told a news conference in Algiers, on the first day of his landmark visit to the former French colony.

The United Nations on Wednesday called on Israel to cancel plans to build thousands of new settler homes in the occupied Palestinian territories, warning it could be "an almost fatal blow" to peace hopes.

U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon's political chief also told the U.N. Security Council that Israel must resume the transfer of frozen tax and customs money to the struggling Palestinian Authority "without delay."

As many as 100,000 Palestinians may have fled a Damascus refugee camp after deadly clashes there, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees said Wednesday.

"People are still leaving in droves," UNRWA deputy chief of staff Lisa Gilliam told AFP, adding that the organization estimated that around two thirds of the some 150,000 residents of Yarmuk camp appeared to have left.

Israel on Wednesday issued tenders to build another 1,048 settler homes in annexed east Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank, housing ministry spokesman Ariel Rosenberg told AFP.

Rosenberg said an unspecified number of homes would go up in the east Jerusalem settlement suburb of Har Homa, but construction would be "mainly in Beitar, Karnei Shomron, Givat Zeev and Efrat," in the West Bank.

The fall of the Syrian regime is "only a matter of time", Turkey's foreign minister said on Wednesday, calling on other countries to help make the transition period as brief as possible.

"It is clear that if a regime loses legitimacy and fights against its own people, that regime will lose that fight," Ahmet Davutoglu said at a press conference after meeting with his Finnish counterpart Erkki Tuomioja in Helsinki.

Syria's top Islamic authority appealed to the opposition to seek "regime change through dialogue, not by force," the SANA state news agency said on Wednesday.

"Members of the foreign-based opposition will ultimately be forced to sit at the negotiating table," Grand Mufti Sheikh Ahmed Hassun Badreddin was quoted as saying.

Iraq's ailing President Jalal Talabani is to be airlifted to Germany for specialist treatment after suffering a reported stroke, his office said on Wednesday.

Talabani was hospitalized late on Monday with what state television reported was a stroke, but doctors said on Wednesday his condition was improving.

The U.N. appealed Wednesday for $1.5 billion to help Syrians fleeing the fighting, warning that the number of refugees in neighboring countries could double to a million by June.

"The conflict has become increasingly brutal and indiscriminate and has exacted a heavy toll," the U.N.'s humanitarian affairs agency said in a statement.

Israel's plans for new settler homes are accelerating Palestinian moves to appeal to the Hague court over Jewish settlement policy, a senior official told AFP on Wednesday.

"The intensification of settlement activity and all the Israeli actions, from killings to arrests, are pushing us to accelerate our recourse to the International Criminal Court," said Palestinian negotiator Mohammed Shtayyeh.