An al-Qaida splinter group wants a total of 45 million euros in ransoms for two European women aid workers and seven Algerian diplomats taken hostage, the group's spokesman said Wednesday.

The Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) spokesman Adnan Abu Walid Sahraoui gave the figures in reply to a written question submitted by Agence France Presse.

Egypt's military chief of staff said on Wednesday the army may transfer power to an elected president on May 24 if the vote is decided in the first round, state television reported.

The announcement came after four presidential candidates suspended their campaigns as the death toll mounted in bloody in clashes between anti-military supporters of a banned Islamist candidate and unidentified men in plainclothes.

The head of the U.N. mission to Syria said Wednesday his observers were having a "calming effect" on the ground but admitted the ceasefire was "shaky" and not holding.

Speaking in Damascus to Britain's Sky News, in his first television interview in the role, Major General Robert Mood brushed off criticism that the United Nations Supervision Mission in Syria (UNSMIS) had been too slow to get going.

The head of the FBI and Scotland's top prosecutor have visited Libya to assess the ongoing investigation into the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing, Scottish officials said on Wednesday.

The director of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert Mueller, and Scotland's Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland met Libya's interim prime minister Abdel Rahim al-Kib in Tripoli on April 25.

Jordan's King Abdullah II on Thursday warned Israel that building hotel rooms in annexed east Jerusalem would increase regional "tension and stability."

"Israel's continued policies and plans to build settlements and take unilateral measures in Palestinian territories, particularly Jerusalem, will hinder peace efforts and increase tension and instability in the region," a palace statement quoted the king as telling a U.S. congressional delegation.

France concluded on Wednesday two weeks of war games with the United Arab Emirates, which officials from both sides insisted were not related to regional tensions involving Iran.

The exercises, held every four years, came after a simmering row over ownership of three Gulf islands contested by the Emirates and Iran, and the United States' deployment of cutting-edge F-22 fighter jets to the UAE.

A bodyguard working for one of the main parties in Iraq's Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc, which has clashed politically with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, was killed on Wednesday, officials said.

Latif Ramadan Jassim was on duty near the headquarters of the Wifaq (Accord) party in Zeitun, west Baghdad, when he was stabbed to death on Wednesday morning, party spokeswoman and MP Intisar Allawi told AFP.

A Palestinian prisoner who on Wednesday marked his 64th day on hunger strike has been transferred from an Israeli prison infirmary to a civilian hospital, his lawyer told Agence France Presse.

Jamil Khatib said his 27-year-old client Bilal Diab had been transferred from the infirmary at Ramle prison near Tel Aviv to the nearby Assaf HaRofeh hospital on Tuesday lunchtime.

Two Egyptian presidential candidates decided on Wednesday to temporarily suspend their campaigns over clashes in central Cairo that left twelve people dead.

The Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Mursi told reporters he decided to suspend his campaign for 48 hours "in solidarity with the protesters."

A United Nations official is in Syria to assess the humanitarian needs in the strife-torn country, a spokesman for the U.N. mission in Damascus told Agence France Presse on Wednesday.

"Philippe Lazzarini, deputy to (U.N. humanitarian chief) Valerie Amos, is visiting Syria to coordinate with the Syrian government to assess humanitarian needs and direct distribution of aid," Khaled al-Masri said.