Thousands of Christian pilgrims from around the world marched through the streets of Jerusalem on Thursday alongside Israeli soldiers and workers, in an annual show of solidarity with the Jewish state.

A spokesman for the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ) said about 5,000 pilgrims from around 90 countries took part, out of a total participation that Israeli officials estimated at about 25,000.

Russian objections to a draft U.N. statement condemning Syria's deadly shelling of Turkey sent the Security Council back into consultations, diplomats said Thursday.

The draft had been expected to be approved by a "silence procedure" -- the text is considered adopted if no country objects -- but "the Russians broke the silence," Britain ambassador Mark Lyall Grant told reporters.

An Egyptian court on Thursday ordered the release of two Coptic Christian children accused of insulting Islam, a source in the prosecutor's office said.

He told AFP that prosecutor Abdel Meguid Mahmud took the decision because the accused, aged nine and 10, are minors, but the source did not specify if the charges were dropped.

A team of U.S. investigators visited Libya's second city Benghazi on Thursday to examine the site where Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed in an attack last month.

"An American investigative committee visited the site where the U.S. ambassador was killed," a defense ministry official in Benghazi told Agence France Presse, confirming that the team included FBI agents.

A demonstration in support of Jordan's King Abdullah II has been called off over fears of unrest as it coincides with a pro-reform rally by the Islamist opposition on Friday, organizers said.

"We have postponed indefinitely our demonstration scheduled at the same time as the Muslim Brotherhood's to avoid any problems," said Jihad al-Sheik, head of an Internet-based youth group that organized the event.

Turkey's parliament on Thursday authorized military action against Syria but insisted it was not a war mandate following deadly cross-border fire that sent tensions soaring.

The vote came as Turkey retaliated for the shelling that killed five Turkish nationals, and Syria apologized and vowed it would not happen again.

Nine Israelis -- five Arabs and four Jews -- were arrested on Thursday after scuffles at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound, revered by Jews as the Temple Mount, Israeli police told Agence France Presse.

"A group of Arab Israelis threatened a group of Jews and Christians visiting the Temple Mount," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said of a first round of arrests in the morning in which five Arabs and a Jew were detained.

An Egyptian court sentenced an associate of ousted president Hosni Mubarak's son Gamal on Thursday to seven years in jail for money-laundering.

Ahmed Ezz, a steel magnate and former senior official in Mubarak's now defunct National Democratic Party, was also fined a massive 19 billion Egyptian pounds ($3.1 billion/2.4 billion euros).

Syria's chief ally Iran on Thursday urged Syria and Turkey to both show "restraint" following a border shelling exchange that threatened a broader conflict, according to the Fars news agency.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran asks both sides to show restraint, to investigate the issue and take note of the enemy's goals in the region," Iran's deputy foreign minister for Arab affairs, Hossein Amir Adbolahian, told the news agency.

A drone air strike blasted two cars carrying suspected Al-Qaida gunmen in the southern Yemen province of Shabawa on Thursday, killing five of them, a tribal chief and witnesses said.

"Five militants belonging to Ansar Al-Sharia (Partisans of Islamic law) were killed in a drone strike" in Shabwa, said the tribal chief.