The European Union on Thursday lifted an assets freeze against 28 Libyan firms, including ports and banks, to provide funds to the rebel leadership and kickstart the economy.

"Today, the EU has lifted its asset freeze on 28 Libyan entities. Our goal is to provide resources to the interim government and the Libyan people and help to make the economy function again," said EU chief diplomat Catherine Ashton.

The attorney general of the central Syrian province of Hama said he has resigned to protest hundreds of killings and thousands of arrests by President Bashar Assad's regime, after the state agency said the official was kidnapped.

"I, the attorney general of the province of Hama, Mohammed Adnan al-Bakkour, announce my resignation from the regime of Assad and his band," he said in a video posted on YouTube late Wednesday.

Fourteen prisoners charged with "terrorism" escaped from a prison in the north Iraq city of Mosul on Thursday, a police officer said, in the latest jailbreak in Iraq.

"Thirty-five prisoners tried to escape from a prison in al-Faisaliyah" in central Mosul, said Colonel Mohammed al-Jaburi, of the Nineveh province police. Security forces "arrested 21 of them, but 14 others were able to escape from the prison," Jaburi said.

Algeria never envisaged granting asylum to Moamer Kadhafi, its foreign minister told French radio on Thursday, Algeria said Thursday it is ready to recognize Libya's former rebels when they form a broad-based government and insisted it had not offered an escape route to ousted strongman Moammar Gadhafi.

Algeria's Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci told Europe 1 radio that Libya's National Transitional Council had vowed to set-up a "government representative of all regions" and added: "When it has done so, we'll recognize it."

Israel has rearrested a top leader of the Hamas movement in the West Bank, just weeks after releasing him from jail, the Israeli military and Hamas sources said Thursday.

Hassan Yousef was detained on Wednesday night as he tried to cross a checkpoint between the West Bank cities of Ramallah and Nablus, a Hamas source told Agence France Presse.

Russia on Thursday officially recognized Libya's rebels as the governing authority in the country, the foreign ministry said in a statement.

"The Russian Federation recognizes Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC) as the ruling authority and notes its reform program that includes the development of a new constitution, holding general elections and forming the government," it said.

Libyan rebels on Wednesday arrested foreign minister Abdelati al-Obeidi, a key figure of Moammar Gadhafi's regime, a senior rebel commander said.

"Yes, Abdelati al-Obeidi was arrested," Mahdi al-Harati, vice chairman of the rebel military council, told journalists in the capital without giving further details.

Seif al-Islam, fugitive son of fallen Libyan ruler Moammar Gadhafi, said Wednesday in an audio tape on an Arabic-language channel that he was still in the country and the fight against rebels goes on.

"I am talking to you from a suburb of Tripoli," he told the Damascus-based Al-Rai television station. "We want to reassure the Libyan people that we are still here. The resistance continues and victory is near."

A Bahraini Shiite teenage protester was fatally wounded on Wednesday when he was struck in the face by a tear gas canister fired by security forces, the opposition group Al-Wefaq said.

Jawad Ahmed al-Sheikh, 14, was hit in the Shiite village of Sitra during a small protest after Eid al-Fitr prayers, the Gulf kingdom's main Shiite opposition group said on its Facebook page.

France's President Nicolas Sarkozy warned on Wednesday that Iran's alleged attempts to build long-range missiles and nuclear weapons could lead unnamed countries to launch a pre-emptive attack.

"Its military nuclear and ballistic ambitions constitute a growing threat that may lead to a preventive attack against Iranian sites that would provoke a major crisis that France wants to avoid at all costs," he said.