Syria on Thursday signed a preliminary accord outlining a protocol for a U.N. mission to monitor a fragile week-old ceasefire in the strife-torn country, the two sides announced.

Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal al-Meqdad signed the deal with a member of a U.N. advance team, the ministry said in a statement.

Libya's interim prime minister plans to reshuffle his cabinet which has come under fire over corruption scandals and failure to consolidate the national army, a government spokesman said.

Prime Minister Abdel Rahim al-Kib "has reviewed the performance of certain ministries" and "will announce a cabinet reshuffle soon," Nasser al-Manaa told journalists late Wednesday.

Seven al-Qaida suspects, including four Somali nationals, have been killed in battles with Yemeni troops near the southern town of Loder, the ministry of defense said on Thursday.

"The heroes of the 111 battalion of the army, supported by (armed civilians) of the Popular Resistance Committees, attacked and destroyed an al-Qaida" position near Loder, in Yemen's troubled southern Abyan province, the ministry said in a statement.

The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said on Thursday the number of registered Syrians who have fled the unrest in their country to neighboring Jordan reached around 12,500 this month.

"In Jordan, some 12,500 Syrians had registered with UNHCR as of mid-April 2012. This figure is expected to increase as UNHCR and partners expand their outreach efforts and level of assistance to Syrians," the agency said in a statement on its website.

China said Thursday it was considering sending observers to monitor a Syrian ceasefire that came into force last week but is under threat as violence escalates.

"China is earnestly looking into whether to send observers to Syria or not," foreign ministry spokesman Liu Weimin told reporters at a regular briefing.

Russia said on Thursday it was skipping a meeting of foreign ministers on Syria in Paris as they were only aimed at isolating the regime and would hurt the chances of direct peace talks.

"It seems that this meeting is not aimed at finding the grounds for dialogue within Syria, but quite the opposite," the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement.

Turkish officials on Thursday began searching a German-owned vessel suspected of carrying weapons to Syria, a diplomatic source told Agence France Presse.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday accused Syria's Bashar Assad of seeking to "wipe Homs from the map", comparing his campaign to the Libyan regime's attacks on the city of Benghazi.

"Bashar Assad is lying in a shameful way, he wants to wipe Homs from the map like (former Libyan strongman Moammsr) Gadhafi wanted to wipe Benghazi from the map," Sarkozy told Europe 1 radio.

Syrian troops killed a civilian and three civilians were also wounded on Thursday a week into a U.N.-backed truce, a Britain-based human rights watchdog said.

Syrian security forces opened fire in the northeastern oil city of Deir al-Zour before clashes erupted between troops and rebel fighters, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in a statement.

A wave of apparently coordinated bombing and shooting attacks in six different provinces across Iraq killed at least 37 people and wounded more than 150 on Thursday, security officials said.

It was the deadliest day in Iraq since March 20, when shootings and bombings claimed by al-Qaida front group the Islamic State of Iraq killed 50 people and wounded 255 nationwide.