Five straight days of clashes in Cairo between protestors hostile to Egypt's military rulers and security forces have left 17 people dead, the health ministry said Thursday.

The toll rose Thursday after two people died from their injuries, health ministry official Hisham Shiha told state television.

Tunisia's Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali on Thursday announced his new cabinet lineup, with key ministerial posts allotted to his dominant Islamist Ennahda party.

The list of 41 cabinet members was drawn up two months after Tunisia's first free elections on October 23, which chose an assembly tasked with writing a new constitution following the ousting of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January.

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton "strongly" condemned Thursday's attacks in Baghdad that left 57 dead and urged Iraqi leaders to engage in dialogue immediately to address their differences.

Ashton "strongly condemns the latest wave of violent attacks in Iraq," a statement from her office said.

More than 2,000 members of Syria's security forces have been killed in nine months since anti-regime protests broke out, state news agency SANA said on Thursday.

"In response to a fallacious U.N. report on the situation in Syria, we have informed the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights that the number of martyrs has surpassed 2,000 members of the security forces and the army," according to a letter SANA says was sent.

The Tunisian-Libyan border post of Ras Jdir reopened in both directions on Thursday after three weeks of being shut over security concerns, an Agence France Presse photographer said.

Iran will launch 10 days of naval drills from Saturday around the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial oil shipping route, media said, after a rumor emerged earlier this month that it planned to close the strait.

"Our naval drill will begin from 24 December lasting 10 days covering east of Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman to the Gulf of Aden", navy commander Admiral Habibollah Sayari was quoted as saying on Thursday by the Fars news agency.

An Arab League advance team arrived in Syria on Thursday to launch a hard-won observer mission to oversee a plan to end nine months of bloodshed after the opposition accused regime forces of "massacring" hundreds in two days.

Meanwhile, there was no let-up in the killing, with human rights activists reporting at least 21 more people killed and clashes between defectors and regular troops in flashpoints Homs and Idlib.

Prime Minister Kamal al-Ganzouri called on Egyptians Thursday to set aside their political differences for the sake of the economy, warning that the country's finances were deteriorating alarmingly.

The military-appointed prime minister told a press conference that much of the aid promised by donor countries had yet to arrive, while the country suffered an outflow of $9 billion in the past few months.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki vowed on Thursday that the bombers would not be allowed to have any impact on the political process, after a wave of attacks in Baghdad that killed 57 people.

"The timing of these crimes and their locations confirm once again to any doubters the political nature of the goals that those criminals want to achieve," Maliki said in a statement.

A veteran Sudanese military intelligence officer was heading to Cairo on Thursday for preparatory meetings to lead an Arab League observer mission aiming to end nine months of violence in Syria.

General Mohammed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi was named on Tuesday to head the team, a day after Syrian President Bashar Assad's embattled regime agreed after weeks of stalling to accept the observers.