President Bashar Assad has appointed Wael al-Halqi as Syria's new premier, state television reported on Thursday.

"The president has signed Decree 298, appointing Wael al-Halqi as the new prime minister," the broadcaster reported.

The number of Syrian refugees in Turkey who have fled the escalating violence in their strife-torn homeland has reached more than 50,000, Turkish officials said Thursday.

The total number of the refugees was 50,227 as of Thursday after more than 5,000 Syrians crossed into Turkey this week, the country's Disaster and Emergency Administration said in a statement posted on its website.

Police on Thursday fired warning shots and tear gas to disperse a demonstration in the central Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid, birthplace of last year's revolution, an Agence France Presse journalist reported.

One person was wounded by a rubber bullet and four others affected by the tear gas were taken to the town's hospital, an official there said, adding that none of them were in a serious condition.

The U.S. and Israeli evaluation of Iran's nuclear program are closer than ever following a secret U.S. intelligence report, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Thursday.

"It seems there really is a report by U.S. intelligence agencies. I don't know if it's by the National Intelligence Estimate or a different agency circulating between senior chambers," he told public radio, asked about the report which Israeli daily Haaretz ran on its front page.

Rebels retreated from the key Aleppo district of Salaheddin under a deadly rain of shellfire on Thursday, with the showdown battle for Syria's commercial capital raging into a second day.

"We have staged a tactical withdrawal from Salaheddin. The district is completely empty of rebel fighters. Regime forces are now advancing into Salaheddin," said Hossam Abu Mohammed, a Free Syrian Army (FSA) commander.

Police and gunmen traded fire in the Sinai town of El-Arish on Thursday as security forces pushed ahead with a campaign aimed at quelling a surge in Islamist militancy, state television reported.

The state-owned Nile News television reported clashes outside a police station in the north Sinai town a day after reported air strikes killed 20 militants in a neighboring village.

An A310 airliner carrying a French military medical team destined to help refugees on the Joranian-Syrian border took off from Paris on Thursday.

With around 25 medical and 25 logistics staff on board, the plane was to stop off in Istres on France's Mediterranean coast to pick up 20 tons of medical aid before flying to Amman.

Kuwait will not attend a conference that Iran is to host on Thursday on finding ways to end the conflict in Syria, a senior official said in a newspaper report.

"We have informed Iran officially that we are not attending," foreign ministry undersecretary Khaled al-Jarallah was quoted as saying in the privately owned al-Seyassah newspaper.

Syria's army, locked in a fierce battle for control of Aleppo, pounded rebel-held areas of the commercial capital on Thursday, rights activists reported.

An intense bombardment rocked the neighborhoods of Hanano, Saif al-Dawla, Shaar and Shakur from 3:00 am (0000 GMT), according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

A group of 160 Syrians travelling in a fishing boat arrived in the southern Italian port of Crotone on Wednesday, the Italian ANSA news agency said.

The group from the conflict-torn country was made up mainly of families and included 76 men, 36 women and 48 children.