A rogue Libyan ex-general resumed air strikes on jihadists in the city of Benghazi Wednesday, while gunmen attacked an interior ministry team in Tripoli tasked with protecting the outgoing government.

Amid the ever-worsening insecurity in the North African country, Washington urged U.S. citizens there to leave "immediately" and was even readying a possible evacuation of its embassy.

The death toll from Syrian air raids on rebel-held areas in the northern city of Aleppo has topped 40 over a 24-hour period, a monitoring group said Wednesday.

Barrel bombs killed 22 people Tuesday in the eastern districts of Hay Qataneh, Tariq al-Bab, Bustan al-Qasr, Bani Zeid, Mghayer and Lairamoun, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Israeli soldiers raided the offices of a Palestinian newspaper in the West Bank city of Ramallah Wednesday, ordering them to stop printing publications by the Islamist movement Hamas, managers said.

"Officers informed us that Israel would not allow the printing and distribution of Falastin, Al-Resala, and Al-Istiqlal," three Hamas newspapers, the Al-Ayyam's managers said in a statement.

Syrian President Bashar Assad's is preparing for an inevitable re-election next week as the civil war shifts in the army's favor, with rebels losing ground and world powers paralyzed by divisions.

A brutal three-year conflict that wrought destruction across the country and displaced millions, has left large swathes of territory in rebel hands. And the June 3 vote, in which Assad is seeking a third seven-year term, will only take place in regime-controlled areas.

A Jordanian military tribunal handed jail terms of between four and 20 years on Wednesday to 11 people it convicted of plotting to attack the U.S. embassy for Al-Qaida in 2012.

The state security court found the men guilty of "plotting to carry out terrorist acts and possessing explosives as well as automatic and other weapons for illicit use."

Israeli officials denounced as "political" Wednesday attempts by a Turkish court to secure an international arrest warrant for four former Israeli military commanders over a deadly 2010 maritime assault.

But the court ruling, issued on Monday, was unlikely to have a "significant effect" on attempts to restore full diplomatic relations between Israel and Turkey, which were badly damaged by the raid, officials said.

Police closed the flashpoint Al-Aqsa compound to visitors Wednesday as Israel marked Jerusalem Day and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to never allow the city to be divided.

The annual celebration recalls the Israeli army's seizure of the walled Old City in what was then Jordanian-held east Jerusalem on the third day of the 1967 Six-Day War.

Israel's Prisons Service has hospitalized 40 Palestinian inmates who have been refusing food for over a month in protest against the terms of their imprisonment, spokeswoman Sivan Weizman said Wednesday.

Describing their condition as "reasonable" Weizman told Agence France Presse they had been taken to hospital at different stages.

Qatar could firm up its interest in buying French Rafale fighter planes when its new Emir, Sheikh Tamim Ben Hamad Al Thani visits Paris on June 23, the La Tribune financial website reported on Wednesday.

The contract is of vital importance to the Dassault Aviation group which builds the plane and to the French government.

More than 400 migrants stormed across a towering, triple-layer border fence from Morocco into the tiny Spanish territory of Melilla on Wednesday, one of the biggest crossings in nearly a decade, officials said.

About 1,000 sub-Saharans joined in the dawn attempt to enter Melilla, a tempting target for Africans desperate to reach Europe as it forms one of the only land crossings along with another Spanish territory, Ceuta, to the west.