Egypt's new Prime Minister, Hisham Qandil, will announce a cabinet on Thursday, almost a month after President Mohammed Morsi took office amid a power struggle with the military, state media reported on Saturday.

Qandil, a former irrigation minister, has been in consultations with candidates since Morsi appointed him last week to head the new government, which must carry out the president's ambitious plans for the country.

More than 20,000 people have been killed in Syria since the start of an anti-regime revolt in March 2011, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Saturday.

"At least 20,028 people, among them 13,978 civilians and rebels, 968 army defectors and 5,082 members of the regime forces have been killed since the start of the revolt on March 15 of last year," Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Britain-based Observatory, told Agence France Presse by phone.

Three rockets fired by militants inside the Gaza Strip hit southern Israel on Saturday without causing casualties or damage, the military said.

"The three rockets hit an uninhabited area near the town of Sderot, and caused neither casualties nor damage," a spokeswoman told Agence France Presse.

A five-day Saudi fundraising campaign to support the people in Syria has raised more than $72.33 million, the kingdom's Interior Minister Prince Ahmed bin Abdul Aziz was quoted as saying Saturday.

The campaign, launched on Monday, received donations worth 271.245 million riyals ($72.33 million), the state news agency SPA reported quoting Prince Ahmed.

Russia said Saturday it would not cooperate with a new round of European Union sanctions against Syria and would not consent to inspections of ships flying the Russian flag.

"We do not plan to take any part in measures carrying out European Union decisions directed against Syria," foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich was quoted as saying in a statement.

A Saudi man who spent nearly seven years in an Israeli jail after he got lost in Egypt's Sinai desert has returned home, local daily al-Watan reported on Saturday.

Abdulrahman al-Atwi arrived in Riyadh on Thursday from the United States to where he was deported by Israel several months ago, the newspaper said, adding that it met him at his lawyer's residence in the Saudi capital.

Russia warned Saturday that a "tragedy" was looming in Syria's second city of Aleppo but said it was unrealistic to expect the government would stand by when armed rebels were occupying major cities.

"We are persuading the government that they need to make some first gestures," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a news conference alongside his Japanese counterpart.

Israeli troops on Saturday arrested a member of the Islamic Jihad militant group at his home in the West Bank city of Nablus, his relatives said.

Relatives of Abdallah Harouf, 24, said that troops seized him at his home near the Old City during the early hours of Saturday.

Two Italian technicians, who worked as subcontractors in Syria for Italian energy group Ansaldo, were released late on Friday after going missing for a week, the official SANA news agency said.

"During operations to cleanse some (rebel) areas in the province of Damascus, Syrian troops managed to liberate the two Italian technicians, who were kidnapped by an armed terrorist group," SANA said.

Syrian rebels staved off a fightback by regime forces in Aleppo on Saturday amid growing concern about the risks of reprisals against civilians in the country's commercial capital.

After massing for two days, troops backed by tanks and helicopter gunships moved on southwestern Aleppo where rebels concentrated their forces when they seized much of the northern city on July 20.