The United States said Wednesday it was aware of informal offers of asylum to Syrian President Bashar Assad by countries in the Middle East and elsewhere.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner gave no details, referring reporters to others governments after being asked about speculation that the Syrian president was weighing asylum offers from Latin America.

Tunisia's main labor union on Wednesday called for a nationwide general strike next week, as tensions rose in the run-up to the second anniversary of the country's revolution.

"The UGTT (General Union of Tunisian Workers) has decided that a general strike will take place on Thursday, December 13, across Tunisia," it told Agence France Presse.

Five people were killed Wednesday and at least a dozen injured in a moderate earthquake that struck eastern Iran near the Afghan border, a provincial emergency official said.

"Based on the latest reports from the scene, the quake killed five people and injured 12 others," Mohammad Ali Akhoundi, head of South Khorasan province's crisis management service, told Mehr news agency.

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.