About 100 Sudanese journalists and activists staged a silent vigil on Thursday in support of a global campaign to support Al-Jazeera television journalists detained in Egypt.

"Working as a journalist is not a crime," said a banner held by the protesters who gathered on a street near the Qatar-based satellite channel's Khartoum office.

A gas tank on the roof of a restaurant exploded in the Qatari capital Thursday, killing 12 people, mostly Asian and Arab customers, and injuring 31 others, the interior ministry said.

The blast tore through the restaurant, which is attached to a mall in Doha and next to a petrol station, according to footage aired on Qatar Television.

Qatar's foreign minister said Wednesday his country and Iran both back a "political solution" to the conflict in Syria despite their support for opposite sides.

"Everyone is agreed on one point, that the Syrian crisis should be resolved through a political solution," Foreign Minister Khaled al-Attiyah told a joint news conference in Tehran with his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif.

More than 450 Indian migrants working in Qatar have died in the last two years, data shows as the Gulf state is under pressure over its rights record ahead of the 2022 World Cup.

In response to a Right to Information request filed by Agence France Presse, the Indian embassy in Qatar gave figures detailing the number of deaths in 2012 and the first 11 months of 2013.

Fearful of Arab Spring-inspired unrest, Gulf monarchies have stepped up efforts to monitor and control the media, particularly online, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said Wednesday.

Saudi Arabia, which is on the group's "Enemies of the Internet" list and ranks 164 out of 179 on its 2014 World Press Freedom Index, has been particularly aggressive in policing the Internet, including by arresting those who post critical articles or comments, it said.

Egypt's foreign ministry said it summoned Qatar's charge d'affaires in Cairo on Tuesday to demand the handover of Islamist fugitives in exile in Doha.

Relations between the countries deteriorated with the Egyptian military's overthrow of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi and its subsequent crackdown on his Muslim Brotherhood movement, which Qatar backs.

Scores of supporters of al-Jazeera journalists jailed in Egypt demonstrated on Tuesday in Kenya, the base of one of the detained reporters.

"Being a journalist is not a crime," the crowd of around a 100 shouted outside the Egyptian embassy in Nairobi, in a peaceful protest watched over by armed police.

The U.N.'s human rights office on Friday expressed concern over a crackdown on the media by Egypt's military-backed rulers, spotlighting the treatment of reporters working for Al-Jazeera television.

"We are extremely concerned about the increasingly severe clampdown and physical attacks on media in Egypt, which is hampering their ability to operate freely," said Rupert Colville, spokesman for the U.N. high commissioner for human rights.

Anglo-Dutch energy giant Royal Dutch Shell said Wednesday that it has sold a large stake in an offshore Brazilian oil field to Qatar for about $1.0 billion.

Shell said it has agreed to offload a 23-percent interest in the Parque das Conchas (BC-10) project offshore Brazil to Qatar Petroleum International. The deal remains subject to regulatory approval in Brazil.

Three former international prosecutors have accused Syria of large-scale killing and torture in a report -- based on evidence of a defector -- commissioned by Qatar, which backs Syrian rebels, the Guardian and CNN reported Monday.

The report, which can be found online at both news outlets, relies on the unauthenticated testimony and photographs given by the source, who remains unidentified for security purposes.