Israel began a major civil defense drill in the Tel Aviv region on Thursday aimed at simulating the response to conventional and non-conventional missile attacks, the military said.

"The rescue units of the civil defense, police, fire service and Magen David Adom (emergency services) will participate in the exercise," an army statement said.

Syrian troops killed 20 civilians and arrested dozens on Thursday, a rights watchdog said, a day after Damascus pledged to withdraw its forces from protest hubs under an Arab League plan to end the bloodshed.

"Twenty civilians were killed today in several neighborhoods of Homs where the sound of gunfire can still be heard," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights in a statement received by Agence France Presse.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking cabinet support for a military strike on Iran, the Haaretz newspaper reported on Wednesday, after days of speculation about plans for an attack.

The report, citing a senior Israeli official, said Netanyahu was working with Defense Minister Ehud Barak to win support from skeptical members of the cabinet who oppose attacking Iranian nuclear facilities.

Three motorbikes rigged with explosives blew up in the southern Iraqi port city of Basra late on Wednesday, killing at least eight people and wounding at least 22, a doctor and police said.

A doctor at Sadr Hospital in Basra said that at least eight people were killed and 22 wounded in the blasts, while a police lieutenant colonel gave the same toll.

The international war crimes court is still negotiating surrender terms with Moammar Gadhafi’s son, Seif al-Islam, the court's prosecutor said Wednesday.

The International Criminal Court has "received questions from individuals linked to Seif al-Islam about the legal conditions attaching to his potential surrender," chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told the U.N. Security Council.

The White House said Wednesday, after the Arab League revealed Syria had agreed to a plan to end political violence, that it had not changed its position that President Bashar al-Assad should go.

White House spokesman Jay Carney did not comment on the details of the Arab League plan or on whether Washington had been informed of the Syrian response.

Two ships carrying medical aid and activists have set sail from Turkey in a new bid to break Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip, pro-Palestinian activists said on Wednesday.

A statement issued by the Freedom Waves group said the mini-flotilla made up of one Irish ship and one Canadian ship had left Fethiye on Turkey's south coast on Wednesday afternoon and planned to arrive in Gaza on Friday.

The White House said Wednesday it was "deeply disappointed" that Israel decided to speed up settlement building after UNESCO decided to admit the Palestinians, boosting their statehood drive.

"We are deeply disappointed by yesterday's announcement about accelerated housing construction in Jerusalem and the West Bank," said White House spokesman Jay Carney.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday that Berlin wanted the United Nations to take a firmer line on Syria's attacks on civilians after nearly eight months of deadly violence.

Merkel told reporters after talks with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that they agreed in "condemning the human rights violations occurring in Syria".

Syria accepted Wednesday an Arab League plan to end nearly eight months of bloodshed in the revolt-hit country, as the Arab organization urged Damascus to “seriously” implement the approved roadmap.

The agreement announced at a meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo came amid huge pressure on President Bashar al-Assad's regime, even from traditional allies such as China, to end weeks of prevarication and sign up to the deal drawn up by the pan-Arab bloc.