Almost 200 Libyan prisoners have escaped from a jail in the southern town of Sabha in unclear circumstances, officials said on Wednesday.

"One hundred and ninety-seven prisoners escaped the prison of Sabha yesterday (Tuesday)," a member of the security services told AFP on condition of anonymity.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday called on all warring parties in Syria to stop fighting immediately, saying there is no military solution to the conflict.

"The military option cannot be a solution. The violence must stop immediately," Ban told reporters in Kuwait City after talks with Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Khaled al-Sabah.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday called on all warring parties in Syria to stop fighting immediately, saying there is no military solution to the conflict.

"The military option cannot be a solution. The violence must stop immediately," Ban told reporters in Kuwait City after talks with Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Khaled al-Sabah.

A mortar shell fired from war-torn Syria slammed into the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights on Wednesday without causing any casualties or damage, the Israeli army said.

"A shell fired during fighting in Syria landed by mistake on the center of the Golan plateau," an Israeli army spokeswoman said.

The deputy governor of the northern Syrian province of Raqa and several aides resigned on Wednesday to protest the security forces' interference in their work, a monitoring group and an activist said.

"They resigned in protest over interference in their work by the security forces, and also to denounce the diversion of basic commodities from Raqa to other provinces, including flour and fuel," an anti-regime activist told AFP via the Internet.

Iran's exiled opposition on Wednesday launched a campaign to have France and the European Union grant it the same recognition they have accorded to the Syrian coalition battling to overthrow Bashar Assad.

"The West's biggest political error has been to ignore the key movement for change in Iran," said Maryam Radjavi, the president of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in remarks published Wednesday that Ankara

knows the "exact location" of hundreds of ground missiles belonging to the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Protests in Syria's northern city Aleppo against the Free Syrian Army highlight the waning influence of mainstream rebel groups and the rise of more disciplined and better-equipped radical Islamists.

Once a rare sight in the Syria's second city and commercial hub, plagued since July 20 by deadly urban combat, the presence of Islamist fighters has now become increasingly felt.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Wednesday for an open and transparent dialogue in Egypt amid a deepening political crisis over sweeping powers adopted by President Mohamed Morsi.

"The upheaval we are seeing now once again in the streets of Cairo and other cities indicates that dialogue is urgently needed," Clinton told journalists at the end of a two-day NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels.

An Israeli plan to build new settler homes in a sensitive area near Jerusalem passed a first hurdle Wednesday, sparking fury from the Palestinians, who said building there would end all hopes of peace.

Israel's plan for construction in a strip of West Bank land outside Jerusalem called E1 has sparked a major diplomatic backlash, with experts warning it could wipe out hopes of establishing a viable Palestinian state.