Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi on Wednesday issued a decree naming Mohammed Raafat Shehata the country's new head of intelligence, after the former spy chief was forced into retirement.

Shehata had been acting director of the Egyptian General Intelligence Directorate since August 8 when his predecessor Murad Muwafi resigned, the official MENA news agency reported.

The United States on Wednesday accused a Belarus state-owned firm of supplying munitions to the Syrian government, as it announced new sanctions focused on the Syrian conflict.

The U.S. Treasury named Belarus firm Belvneshpromservice and the Syrian military's Army Supply Service for sanctions under U.S. executive order 13382 that identifies targets as proliferators or supporters of proliferators of weapons of mass destruction.

French schools and cultural centers in Egypt will close on Thursday as a precautionary measure after the publication in France of cartoons mocking the Prophet Mohammed, the consulate said.

"Although there has been no specific threat in Egypt, it has been decided as a precaution and as in other countries, to close French schools and cultural centers in Egypt on Thursday September 20," it said in a statement.

President Bashar Assad told Iran's foreign minister on Wednesday that the war engulfing Syria is targeting not just it but the "resistance axis," state news agency SANA reported.

Assad's regime, Iran, and Hizbullah refer to themselves as a "resistance axis" in their common opposition to Israel.

Yemeni authorities Wednesday beefed up security around the French embassy in Sanaa after a French weekly published cartoons of a naked Prophet Mohammed, a security official told Agence France Presse.

"Security reinforcements were deployed today (Wednesday) around the French embassy in Sanaa," the official said on condition of anonymity. "These measures were taken based on the embassy's request."

The head of Syria's main opposition coalition expressed reservations on Wednesday about the presence of staunch Damascus ally Iran in the regional contact group on the strife-torn country.

"We have informed the Qatari leadership of our reservations over the matter of having Iran join the quartet," Abdel Basset Sayda, chairman of the Syrian National Council, told AFP in Doha after meeting Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem.

Sunni Islam's highest authority on Wednesday condemned a French weekly's publication of cartoons of a naked Prophet Mohammed, with the region still reeling from an anti-Islam film that sparked deadly protests.

Al-Azhar expressed "its and all Muslims' utmost rejection of the insistence of a French publication in printing caricatures offensive to Islam and its Prophet, the prophet of humanity," Grand Imam Ahmed al-Tayyeb said in a statement.

A Turkish jet that crashed in June was downed after a Syrian missile exploded nearby in international airspace, the army said Wednesday, three months after an incident that heightened tensions between the two neighbors.

The probe by the army prosecutor into the downing of the two-seater F4 Phantom found that it crashed into the eastern Mediterranean after a Syrian missile exploded near its rearside, the army said in a statement.

Militants assaulted a police station north of Baghdad on Wednesday, killing one policeman, as four people including two soldiers were shot dead in other attacks, security and medical officials said.

Militants shelled the police station in Hibhib, the town where Al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in 2006, before attacking the facility with light and medium weapons, a colonel in the Diyala Operations Command said.

Saudi Arabia on Wednesday denied allegations that the kingdom has barred citizens of war-hit Syria from performing the annual Muslim pilgrimage while local media said it has refused to increase hajj country quotas.

"The kingdom is currently working on finalizing all measures needed in coordination with the concerned authorities to enable Syrian pilgrims to perform" the pilgrimage, hajj ministry undersecretary Hatem Qadi said.