A woman died under torture in western Syria and more than 150 people were arrested over the past 24 hours in a Damascus suburb, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Wednesday.

The Britain-based group said that a 28-year-old woman who was arrested a week ago died under torture in the city of Khan Shehoun on Wednesday.

At least five people, including a woman and a child, were killed and nine wounded in a series of attacks in Iraq's restive central province of Diyala on Wednesday, security and hospital officials said.

In the worst attack, four people were killed and seven wounded when insurgents detonated bombs at the homes of three town criers whose job was to awaken people for the Ramadan pre-dawn meal, at around 3:00 am (00:00 GMT) in the town of al-Hudaid, west of provincial capital Baquba, according to an Iraqi army colonel in Diyala's security command centre.

Israeli air strikes on Wednesday killed a Palestinian militant, prompting a flurry of mortar fire into southern Israel just days after armed groups agreed to a temporary truce.

Heightened tensions in and around the Gaza border raised fears of a fresh descent into violence scarcely 48 hours after militant factions had agreed to end rocket fire on southern -- Israel on condition the Israeli air force also stopped its raids.

European nations and the United States pressed Wednesday for U.N. sanctions against Syria's President Bashar Assad and his entourage for their deadly crackdown on opposition protests.

A draft resolution circulated to the 15 nation Security Council on Tuesday by Britain, France, Germany and Portugal also calls for a total arms embargo against the country.

Libyan rebels Wednesday hunted for Moammar Gadhafi and battled remnants of his forces, as the defiant strongman boasted he went walkabout and urged residents to cleanse Tripoli of "rats."

Two powerful blasts thought to be caused by an air attack rocked the capital early in the morning as a NATO warplane flew overhead, hours after rebel fighters overran Gadhafi's Bab al-Azizya compound in the center of Tripoli.

Yemen's Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Mujawer returned to Sanaa on Tuesday from hospital in Riyadh, more than two months after he was hurt in a bomb attack on the president's compound, state television said.

Mujawer is the first top Yemeni official to return from medical treatment in Saudi Arabia after being wounded in the June 3 blast in the mosque of the presidential palace, which killed 11 people and wounded several others.

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and his family are still in Tripoli, where his troops were engaged in fierce fighting with rebels outside his compound on Tuesday, his son Seif al-Islam said.

"Gadhafi and the entire family are in Tripoli," Seif told reporters at the Rixos hotel in the capital where many foreign journalists are housed.

Syrian dissidents meeting in Istanbul on Tuesday established a "national council" to coordinate a campaign to topple President Bashar al-Assad.

In a final declaration, activists said the council rejected foreign intervention or the rule of any one ethnic group and emphasized the national character of the "revolution."

The U.S. ambassador to Syria on Tuesday visited a town in the south of the country where 15 people were killed last week, an embassy spokesman said.

"Ambassador Robert Ford went this morning to Jassem, 65 kilometers south of Damascus as part of his routine diplomatic duties," the spokesman, who declined to be named, told Agence France Presse.

Rebel fighters captured Moammar Gadhafi's heavily fortified Bab al-Aziziya compound and headquarters in Tripoli on Tuesday after a day of fierce fighting, an Agence France Presse correspondent witnessed.

The defenders had fled, and the whereabouts of Gadhafi or his family were unknown after the insurgents breached the defenses as part of a massive assault that began in the morning.