Lawyers for an Al-Jazeera journalist jailed in Egypt called on Thursday for his release on health grounds, saying he urgently needed surgery for a broken shoulder.

Canadian-Egyptian Mohamed Fahmy, one of three reporters with the Qatari broadcaster detained and sentenced to up to 10 years in prison, also needs treatment for Hepatitis C, his lawyers said.

The U.N.'s top human rights body took Egypt to task Wednesday for a litany of rights abuses, including its crackdown on supporters of ousted Islamist president Mohammed Morsi, journalists and activists.

In the Human Rights Council's first review of Egypt's rights record since 2010, which covers the period since long-ruling leader Hosni Mubarak was toppled to the turbulent ousting of Morsi, several Western envoys voiced alarm at the worsening human rights situation in Egypt.

At least 18 people were killed when a bus packed with high school students collided with three other vehicles, including a tanker truck, in northern Egypt on Wednesday, medics said.

The crash, near the Nile Delta city of Damanhur, 160 kilometers (100 miles) north of Cairo, also injured 18 people, some of them seriously, police and hospital officials said.

The head of Libya's self-declared government, Omar al-Hassi, has called in an interview with Agence France Presse for new elections to pull the violence-wracked nation back from chaos.

Three years after veteran dictator Moammar Gadhafi was toppled and killed in a NATO-backed uprising, the oil-rich North African country has two rival governments and a host of armed militias sparring for influence.

Renowned Egyptian actress Mariam Fakhreddine passed away at the age of 81, media reports said on Monday.

Fakhreddine suffered from illness and had underwent brain surgery early in October but failed to recover consciousness since, according to reports.

An Egyptian court jailed eight men for three years on Saturday over a video prosecutors claimed was of a gay wedding, which went viral on the Internet.

Homosexuality is not specifically banned under Egyptian law, so the men, arrested in September, were convicted of broadcasting images that "violated public decency."

Hundreds of Egyptian workers have been refused entry to Libya over the past 48 hours because their visas were not valid, a spokesman at Tripoli's Miitiga airport said Saturday.

"Around 800 Egyptians were turned away. They all had non-compliant visas," the spokesman told AFP.

Seven Egyptian soldiers were wounded Friday in an explosion near El-Arish, a week after a deadly attack in the same area of the Sinai peninsula killed 30 soldiers, a security official said.

"Two officers and five soldiers were wounded in a bomb explosion against their vehicle south of El-Arish," the capital of North Sinai province, the source said.

Egypt has the right to use a Gaza buffer zone to boost its security, but should also be concerned about the impact on local communities, the United States said Thursday.

"Certainly we believe that Egypt has the right to take steps to maintain their own security. And we understand the threat that they are facing from the Sinai," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

U.S. embassies in the Gulf and Egypt are calling for vigilance after a post on a jihadist website encouraged attacks on American and other international schools there, specifically teachers.

The warnings have been issued by missions in Egypt, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.