A terrorist haven in the eyes of the Syrian regime but "heart of the revolution" for its foes, Baba Amr is now a ghost town where residents move silently among the rubble of their homes.

Two months of bombardment reduced this central district of Homs city to nothing more than a heap of ruins. The walls of houses are pocked with bullets holes, punctured by tank shells and gouged by shrapnel.

Moammar Gadhafi’s regime funded French President Nicolas Sarkozy's 2007 election campaign, lawyers for former Libyan prime minister Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi said Thursday, quoting their client.

"Moammar Gadhafi, his regime and the officials who worked with him financed Sarkozy's election campaign in 2007," lawyer Bechir Essed told reporters in Tunis, where Mahmoudi is detained, mentioning the sum of some 50 million euros ($65 million).

Syria's Aleppo University on Thursday announced it was suspending classes after pro-government forces killed four students and arrested more than 200 in a campus raid during anti-regime protests.

In a message posted on its website, the northern city's university told students that classes were suspended until final exams on May 13.

Syrian security forces arrested two sons of prominent opposition figure Fayez Sara on Thursday, hauling them off to an unknown location without showing a warrant, he told Agence France Presse.

"Security forces stormed the apartment where the brothers live at 6 am (03:00 GMT). They broke down the door looking for weapons and took Bassam, 37, and Wissam, 26,” Sara told AFP by telephone.

Egypt's military rulers vowed Thursday that this month's presidential election will be fair and moved to assure the public it would hand over power, a day after a deadly attack on an anti-military protest.

"We are committed to fair elections 100 percent. We don't have any candidates. All the candidates are respectable Egyptians," said Major General Mohammed al-Assar of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces

Yemeni soldiers killed eight al-Qaida militants as they tried to attack an army post in the southern province of Abyan on Thursday, the defence ministry said.

"Eight al-Qaida militants were killed and others wounded" when army forces "foiled their attack" against a military post near Bajdar on the outskirts of the provincial capital Zinjibar, the ministry's website 26sep.net said.

An overwhelming 48 percent of Israelis support the re-election of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to a poll published Thursday ahead of an announcement on early general elections.

Netanyahu is expected to announce next week that he will be moving the vote up to September 4 this year from October 2013.

Four students were killed overnight and 28 wounded as Syrian government troops and pro-regime gunmen raided the university campus in the northern city of Aleppo, a monitoring group said Thursday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said three of the wounded students were in critical condition and some 200 detained in the raid just after midnight.

Saudi Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz has described as "unacceptable" Iran's attitude towards three islands under its control which Gulf Cooperation Council member UAE claims it owns, a report said.

"I reiterate the kingdom's condemnation to the unacceptable attitude of neighboring Iran that continues to ignore the legitimate right of the United Arab Emirates over its three occupied islands," said Prince Nayef, who is also Saudi Arabia's interior minister.

A Cairo meeting between Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal and an official of the rival Fatah movement made no headway on the formation of a Palestinian national unity government, an official said on Thursday.

Two hours of talks Wednesday night in the Egyptian capital produced "nothing new," the Palestinian official told Agence France Presse, speaking on condition of anonymity.