A blast ripped through a courthouse in the eastern city of Benghazi on Friday causing serious damage to the building but no casualties, Libyan security sources said.

The explosion punched a hole three meters (10 feet) in diameter through the walls of the courthouse on Meidan al-Shajara, a public square flanked by several government offices and the National Oil Corporation, an Agence France Presse journalist said.

Russian deputy foreign minister Mikhail Bogdanov said Thursday that French calls to use force in Syria under a United Nations mandate were counterproductive.

Bogdanov's comments came a day after French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said Syria's United Nations-backed peace plan was "seriously compromised" and held out the threat of seeking military action to end a brutal 13-month crackdown on dissent.

In strife-torn Syria, 7,195 candidates have registered to compete for 250 seats in parliamentary elections set for May 7, according to state news agency SANA.

The poll, in which 710 women are standing, will run amid an uprising against President Bashar Assad's regime, which broke out in March last year.

Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi demanded on Thursday the "rapid deployment" of U.N. observers to Syria to monitor a ceasefire that is becoming ever more tenuous.

"The entire world is waiting for a truce and the observers to be deployed, but unfortunately the fighting has not stopped and every day new victims die," he said at a league ministerial meeting in Cairo.

Turkey is considering every possibility if the continuing violence in neighboring Syria send tens of thousands of refugees pouring across the border, its foreign minister said Thursday.

"In the face of developments in Syria, we are taking into consideration any kind of possibility in line with our national security and interests," Ahmet Davutoglu told parliament during a briefing to lawmakers.

Exiled Syrian businessman Nofal Dawalibi announced in Paris on Thursday the setting up of a "transitional government to answer the needs of the Syrian opposition."

"The situation in Syria is getting worse every day. Chaos is rising," said Dawalibi, whose father Maarrouf was Syrian prime minister before President Bashar al-Assad's Baath party took power in 1963.

A Kuwaiti court Thursday fined a local television station 500,000 dinars ($1.8 million) for airing a program deemed offensive to the Gulf state's ruling family, according to the court ruling.

The program, aired in October 2010 by SCOPE TV director and former lawmaker, Talal al-Saeed, charged that ancestors of the Al-Malek branch of the Al-Sabah ruling family attempted to overthrow the government 50 years ago.

Syria on Thursday accused "armed terrorist groups," which it blames for the unrest sweeping the country, of committing more than 1,300 violations of a truce that came into force on April 12.

"Armed terrorist groups have intensified (the number of) massacres, explosions and acts of aggression, committing more than 1,300 violations since the ceasefire came into force on April 12," Adnan Mahmoud told Agence France Presse.

Egypt's electoral committee announced on Thursday the list of 13 candidates for next month's first post-uprising presidential poll after a tumultuous run-up that saw three leading candidates disqualified.

Ahmed Shafiq, the premier appointed by president Hosni Mubarak just before his overthrow last year, was included after the committee reversed on Wednesday an early decision to exclude him.

A suicide car bombing near a cafe and another bomb attack inside it killed eight people in central Iraq on Thursday, while bomb attacks in Baghdad killed four others, security officials said.

The suicide bomber attacked a cafe in the village of Garma, north of Baquba in Diyala province, police Lieutenant Colonel Ahmed al-Karkhi said.