Israel will keep hitting Islamic Jihad if it continues its "terrorist activities" against Israeli targets, a minister warned on Thursday after air strikes on Gaza killed two of its militants.

"We will continue to hit those who hit us. Islamic Jihad, which has an itchy trigger finger, is starting to pay the price," Home Front Defense Minister Matan Vilnai told army radio as a days-old truce appeared to be unraveling.

Security forces shot dead a woman and beat up Syria's best-known political cartoonist on Thursday, a day after violence in which 11 civilians and eight soldiers were killed, activists said.

The woman was shot dead during a military operation in a village near the eastern oil hub of Deir al-Zour, 460 kilometers northeast of Damascus, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Wednesday the Syrian people "have the right to democracy too" following a meeting with a leader of the Libyan rebel movement that toppled Moammar Gadhafi's regime.

"Syrians have the right to democracy too, and they are not condemned to being suppressed by a regime that does not understand we are living in a new century," Sarkozy said, while nevertheless ruling out military intervention.

Libyan rebels advancing towards Sirte, the hometown of Moammar Gadhafi, were blocked Wednesday in the town of Bin Jawad as loyalists kept a stiff resistance, an insurgent commander said.

After taking Ras Lanuf, 150 kilometers west of Sirte, the rebels had advanced up to Bin Jawad, but were stuck there as they came under heavy artillery, rebel commander Fawzi Bukatif told Agence France Presse.

Syrian security forces killed seven people, including a woman who died under torture, and arrested more than 150 others over the past 24 hours, activists said on Wednesday.

Four people were killed in the protest hub of Homs in central Syria and two demonstrators were killed in Talbisseh, north of the city, by security forces Wednesday, said the Local Coordination Committees which groups activists on the ground.

China has asked the United Nations to lead post-war reconstruction in Libya, urging a smooth political transition in the North African state after rebels overran Moammar Gadhafi's Tripoli compound.

Beijing also said it was willing to help with efforts to return stability to Libya as the rebels battled the last remnants of Gadhafi's forces.

Libyan rebels put a price of two million dinars ($1.67 million, 1.2 million euros) on the head of strongman Moammar Gadhafi, dead or alive, the head of the National Transitional Council said on Wednesday, as battles rocked the capital Tripoli.

"The NTC supports the initiative of businessmen who are offering two million dinars for the capture of Moammar Gadhafi, dead or alive," Mustafa Abdul Jalil said in Tripoli.

Britain and France said Wednesday they were seeking a new United Nations resolution to unlock frozen Libyan assets in a bid to deliver urgently needed funds to the rebels.

As rebel forces battled to cement their victory a day after overrunning the Tripoli compound of strongman Moammar Gadhafi, officials in Britain and France said they were seeking a new resolution at the U.N. to release the blocked assets.

Some 30 mostly foreign journalists who had been held against their will in Tripoli's Rixos Hotel by guards loyal to Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi were freed on Wednesday.

The journalists, who were growing short of food and water after being confined to the hotel since Sunday, left there around 1 pm (1500 GMT), they reported.

The EU on Wednesday named Iran's elite al-Quds force, five Syrian generals and the military intelligence network in Damascus on a new list of those sanctioned for their role in repression the U.N. says has killed 2,200 people.

The much-feared wing of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was listed for having provided "technical assistance, equipment and support to the Syrian security services to repress civilian protest movements," the European Union's Official Journal showed.