Iraq will re-open two border points to Jordan and Syria, more than a week after they were shut due to rallies blocking the main route linking Baghdad to the two countries, an official said Thursday.

The Trebil crossing, the only checkpoint linking Iraq to Jordan, and the al-Walid crossing, Iraq's southernmost checkpoint along its border with Syria, will open from 6:00 am (0300 GMT) on Friday, according to Mohammed Fathi, a spokesman for the provincial government of the western Iraqi province of Anbar.

An Islamic group headed by influential cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi on Thursday criticized France's "haste" in launching an offensive against Islamists in Mali, warning of "dangerous consequences."

"Military intervention has dangerous consequences, whether in killing, destruction, displacement... and famine, which Mali is already suffering from," the Qatar-based International Union of Muslim Scholars said in a statement.

Slain leader Moammar Gadhafi's son Seif al-Islam, wanted by the ICC for crimes against humanity, appeared for the first time in a Libyan court on Thursday on charges of "undermining state security," a judicial official said.

He was charged after a controversial June visit to Libya by an International Criminal Court team to help prepare his defense against the charges of crimes against humanity in the conflict that overthrew his father.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah and the rival Hamas agreed on Thursday to revive their long-stalled reconciliation accord by the end of this month, the head of Fatah's delegation to talks in Cairo told AFP.

"Fatah and Hamas agreed at a meeting in Cairo on Thursday between delegations of the two movements on a timetable for implementing Palestinian reconciliation," Azzam al-Ahmad said by telephone from the Egyptian capital.

An air raid south of Damascus on Thursday killed at least 11 civilians, among them seven children, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

"Seven girls, three women and a man were killed in the air strike," said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman, updating an earlier toll of 10.

Iran plans to dispatch a small naval fleet to the Mediterranean in line with its intention of boosting its presence in international waters, its navy chief was cited by the media Thursday as saying.

The deployment will mark Iran's third mission since the 1979 Islamic revolution to the Mediterranean. Iranian warships docked at Syrian ports in 2011 and 2012.

An Israeli committee has advanced a controversial plan to build a military college on the Mount of Olives in annexed east Jerusalem, an Israeli non-governmental group said on Thursday.

"The local committee recommended approving the plan," said Aviv Tatarsky of Ir Amim, which supports the "equitable" sharing of Jerusalem.

Saudi Arabia beheaded one of its nationals on Thursday after he was convicted of murdering a fellow citizen, the interior ministry announced.

Saeed al-Qahtani shot dead Khazmaa al-Qahtani, a woman apparently from his own tribe, due to a dispute between the two, the ministry said in a statement published by the official SPA news agency.

More than 100 civilians have been killed in a new "massacre" in Syria, a watchdog said Thursday, as Russia slammed the United States for blaming deadly blasts at a university campus on the Damascus regime.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the deaths came when the army on Tuesday swept through farmlands north of Homs city, where it said around 1,000 people had sought refuge from fighting in the central Syria metropolis.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday hit out at the United States for "blasphemous" accusations blaming this week's blasts in the city of Aleppo on the Syrian regime.

"Yesterday I saw a semi-neutral report on CNN that it was not ruled out that this terrorist act had been staged by the government forces themselves," Lavrov said in the Tajik capital Dushanbe.