Security has been stepped up in the area around the US embassy in Cairo, a security official told Agence France Presse, after a film deemed offensive to Islam sparked violence outside the U.S. missions in Egypt and Libya.

"There is an increased security presence in central Cairo, particularly around the American embassy, following the protest yesterday," the official told AFP.

U.S. ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, and three officials were killed when a mob attacked the U.S. consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi, the interior ministry said Wednesday.

"The ambassador was killed along with three other officials," said Wanis al-Sharif, the deputy minister of the interior. Stevens' death in Tuesday's attack was confirmed in a tweet by Mustafa Abu Shagur, the deputy prime minister.

Vandals scrawled graffiti on a mosque in the southern West Bank in an apparent "price tag" hate crime, an Agence France Presse correspondent and Israeli police spokesman said on Wednesday.

According to spokesman Micky Rosenfeld, the incident occurred in the early hours of Tuesday, when unknown assailants sprayed the words "Price tag Migron" in Hebrew on the exterior wall of the mosque in Imreish village south of Hebron.

King Abdullah II on Wednesday accused Israel of disrupting Jordan's nuclear energy plans and warned of sectarian violence spilling across the border from Syria, in a wide-ranging interview with Agence France Presse.

The king, whose country needs atomic energy to meet its energy needs and power water desalination plants, said "strong opposition to Jordan's nuclear energy program is coming from Israel."

Militants from Gaza on Wednesday fired two projectiles into southern Israel that exploded without causing casualties or damage, a military spokeswoman told Agence France Presse.

"They hit in open areas in the Eshkol region," she said. It was not immediately known if rockets or mortar rounds had been fired.

International peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi is to head to Damascus on Thursday to meet Syria's President Bashar Assad, an Arab diplomat in Cairo said, as fresh bloodshed gripped the north of the country.

In a single incident, rebels killed at least 18 soldiers in a car bomb and ground attack on a military position in Idlib province of northwest Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

An armed mob protesting a film deemed offensive to Islam attacked the U.S. consulate in Benghazi Tuesday killing a U.S. official, hours after angry Islamists stormed Washington's embassy in Cairo.

Libya's deputy interior minister Wanis al-Sharif told Agence France Presse: "One American official was killed and another injured in the hand. The other staff members were evacuated and are safe and sound."

President Barack Obama will not receive Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to the United States later this month, an Israeli official told Agence France Presse on Tuesday.

Netanyahu, who will be attending the United Nations General Assembly in New York, had asked for a meeting with Obama, proposing to travel to Washington for it, the official said

The trial of Libya's former spy chief Bouzid Dorda was adjourned indefinitely on Tuesday as defense lawyers challenged the legality of proceedings in the first case against a top Kadhafi official.

It was the fifth time since June 5 that the trial had been suspended at the request of defense lawyers.

France has helped a number of Syrian military figures to desert from President Bashar Assad's embattled regime, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Tuesday.

"We have contributed to a certain number of desertion operations," he told a parliamentary commission, without giving any further details.