Jordan granted political asylum to a Syrian pilot on Thursday hours after he landed his jet at a military air base in the kingdom, in the first such air force defection in the 15-month revolt.

"The council of ministers has decided to grant the pilot, Colonel Hassan Merei al-Hamade, political asylum, on his request," Information Minister Samih Maaytah told Agence France Presse.

Violence has killed more than 15,000 people in Syria since a revolt erupted last year against the regime of President Bashar Assad, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Thursday.

At least 10,480 civilians, 3,715 soldiers and 830 army defectors have been killed in the crackdown and in clashes since March 2011, said the Britain-based group, which counts those who have taken up arms against the regime as civilians.

Bahraini police said on Thursday they had arrested five of a group of 20 people wanted over "terror attacks", including for alleged bombings and causing harm to civilians and security personnel.

The five were identified as Hasan al-Muallem, Ibrahim Ali, Ali Abbas al-Asfur, Ibrahim Mohammed al-Asfur and Hussein Zaed, in a statement to BNA state news agency by General Tareq Hasan, the head of General Security.

U.S. intelligence operatives in Turkey are vetting the flow of weapons to Syrian rebels to ensure they do not fall into the hands of Al-Qaida militants, the New York Times reported Thursday.

The Times cited unnamed U.S. officials and Arab intelligence officials as saying the weapons were being paid for by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar and funneled across the border by a shadowy opposition network.

Palestinian militants fired rockets from Gaza into Israel for a fourth consecutive day on Thursday, the army said, despite an announcement by Hamas it had agreed to a truce with the Jewish state.

Seven rockets slammed into southern Israel after midnight, causing no casualties and another one was intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-rocket defense system, a military spokesman said.

A torrent of heavy mortar and machinegun fire killed at least four people in and around Homs, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported, a day after nearly 100 people died across the country.

Streaming video from Homs on the bambuser.com website showed smoke billowing from a residential district as the staccato of automatic gunfire was punctuated by the thud of mortar blasts.

The Arab League demanded on Thursday that Russia stop supplying arms to Syria, as a regime onslaught of Homs and its surrounds appeared to stall a Red Cross bid to rescue trapped civilians.

The pan-Arab bloc's deputy secretary general Ahmed Ben Hilli issued the appeal in an interview in which he also called for U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan's mandate to be revamped, and for Iran's inclusion in talks on Syria.

The results of Egypt's presidential election that were scheduled to be announced on Thursday have been delayed, state media reported.

"Egypt's election commission, headed by Judge Faruq Sultan... has decided to delay the announcement of the presidential election run-off," the official MENA news agency said, without giving a new date.

Israel's state watchdog on Wednesday criticized a number of cabinet members in a report on the country's worst ever fire that killed 44 people as it swept through a northern forest in late 2010.

The fire raged through the Carmel forest near the Mediterranean port city of Haifa for four days, destroying millions of trees and hundreds of homes.

Thirty suspected militants were killed as Yemeni aircraft pounded al-Qaida positions between the southern provinces of Abyan and Shabwa on Wednesday, a local official told AFP.