World leaders at the G20 summit on Friday failed to bridge their bitter divisions over U.S. plans for military action against the Syrian regime, with Washington signaling that it has given up on securing Russia's support at the UN on the crisis.

A dinner hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin that ran on into the early hours of the morning failed to win a breakthrough on how to halt a conflict in Syria that has claimed more than 100,000 lives and which is now in its third year.

Algerian soldiers killed two armed Islamists on Thursday in a military operation east of the capital, the defense ministry said.

The incident occurred in Ain El Hamra, in the Boumerdes region, with a weapons cache recovered in the operation, the ministry added, without elaborating.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle on Thursday said that the International Criminal Court should examine the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

"I have again pressed for the U.N. Security Council to give a mandate to the ICC to examine the chemical attack in Syria," he said on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Russia's Saint Petersburg.

NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen sharply regretted international divisions over Syria on Thursday, warning that such splits risked sending a message of encouragement to dictators across the globe to use prohibited deadly weapons.

"I strongly regret that division within the international community," Rasmussen told Agence France Presse on the sidelines of an EU defense ministers' meeting taking place in Lithuania as the United States and Russia sought to overcome divisions over a U.S.-led push for military action against the Damascus regime.

The United States on Thursday accused Russia of holding the U.N. Security Council "hostage" over the Syria chemical weapons crisis.

With the White House pushing Congress to approve military strikes on Syria, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power said she could see no way to seek Security Council approval for action against President Bashar Assad because of Russia's blocking.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will meet Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in London on Monday to discuss the direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians, U.S. officials said Thursday.

Kerry, who has met with Abbas numerous times over the past five months, will next see him at the end of a September 6-9 trip that will also take him to Lithuania and France, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

Prime Minister David Cameron said on Thursday that Britain had further evidence of the use of chemical weapons in Syria, which a British source said confirmed the use of sarin.

"We have just been looking at some samples taken from Damascus in the Porton Down laboratory in Britain which further shows the use of chemical weapons in that Damascus suburb," Cameron told BBC TV from the G20 summit in St Petersburg.

German intelligence believes the Syrian regime was behind last month's chemical attack but that the large death toll may be the result of a dosage "mistake", news site Spiegel Online has reported.

Spiegel cited secret briefings to lawmakers reportedly given by the director of Germany's BND foreign intelligence service, Gerhard Schindler.

The daughter of Libya's ex-spy chief Abdullah al-Senussi, who was reportedly abducted this week, was actually taken by special security forces for her own protection, a Facebook message said Thursday.

Senussi was the intelligence chief for Libya's long-time dictator Moammar Gadhafi, and his daughter Unud had completed a 10-month jail term when she was snatched on Monday.

Morocco's ruling Islamists have struck a deal with the main opposition party to form a new coalition government, ending months of uncertainty after a key ally's decision to withdraw, media reported Thursday.

A cabinet reshuffle is due to be announced in the coming days, following the accord between Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane, and the head of the National Rally of Independents (RNI), Salaheddine Mezouar.