The global police agency Interpol issued alerts Thursday seeking the arrest of two senior officials in late Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi’s regime on suspicion of torture and kidnapping.

A statement from the France-based body said Libya had requested assistance in detaining two officials identified as former interior minister Al-Senussi Alozyre, 63, and his former deputy Naser al-Mabrouk, 60.

The United States on Thursday warned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to respect a U.N.-backed April 10 deadline to end his "horrible" crackdown or face further international pressure.

Echoing assessments made at the United Nations, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the United States saw no signs that Assad's forces were complying with the peace plan to pull out troops and guns from protest cities.

Libyan troops managed to uphold a ceasefire between rival groups in the west of the country after three days of deadly clashes, residents told Agence France Presse on Thursday.

"The fighting has stopped and the army is implementing a ceasefire," said Doctor Shukri al-Arabi, who runs the sole clinic of Zuwarah, 100 kilometers (60 miles) west of Tripoli.

Seif al-Islam, the son of slain Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, has been attacked in detention in Libya, a lawyer from the International Criminal Court said on Thursday.

"Gadhafi has been physically attacked," ICC defense official Xavier-Jean Keita said in a statement accusing Libyan authorities of depriving the country's onetime favorite son of his fundamental rights.

Armed Islamists seized the Algerian consulate in Gao in northeastern Mali on Thursday and abducted seven diplomats, Algeria's foreign ministry and witnesses said.

"The consul and six members of the Algerian consular mission have been taken to an unknown destination," the foreign ministry said in a statement published by the APS news agency.

The U.N. Security Council on Thursday gave formal backing to an April 10 deadline that U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan agreed with the Syrian government to end its military offensive on protest cities, as a U.N. team dispatched by Annan to pave the way for eventual observers arrived in Damascus.

A statement, in which the council "calls upon the Syrian government to implement urgently and visibly its commitments" was adopted at a meeting on Thursday.

Egypt's former spy chief and vice president Omar Suleiman on Thursday ruled out running for the presidency in the upcoming election, ending weeks of speculation, as Khairat el-Shater, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, registered his candidacy.

Suleiman, who served as Hosni Mubarak's vice president before the strongman's overthrow last year, said in statement on Wednesday that he would sit out the election because getting the nomination was too difficult.

The Syrian regime has agreed to provide access to detention facilities throughout the country, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Thursday.

Jakob Kellenberger, who concluded a two-day visit to Damascus on Wednesday, said in a statement that Syrian authorities had agreed on procedures for visits to places of detention.

France is not confident Syrian strongman Bashar Assad will fully implement a ceasefire deal brokered by U.N. envoy Kofi Annan before an April 12 deadline, Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said Thursday.

"Can we be optimistic? I'm not," Juppe said, when asked by journalists about hopes that Annan's plan might bring an end to the Syrian regime's violent repression of a popular revolt against Assad's rule.

Iraq's fugitive Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi has accused Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Shiite government of waging a systematic campaign against Sunni Arabs in Iraq.

In an interview with the pan-Arab al-Jazeera network aired late on Wednesday, Hashemi said the accusations against him of running a death squad "have a sectarian dimension," noting that he is the "fifth Sunni figure to be targeted" by Iraq's Shiite-led government.