Iraq's top criminal court issued death sentences on Thursday against 15 al-Qaida militants for a 2006 wedding massacre in which 70 people were killed, a judicial spokesman said.

"The Central Criminal Court of Iraq today issued 15 death sentences," said Abdelsattar Birakdar.

The Syrian army has stationed tanks at entrances to Khan Sheikhun in Idlib province and troops have begun to enter the northwest town, a rights activist said on Thursday.

"Dozens of tanks, armored cars, personnel carriers and army trucks have been deployed at entrance points to Khan Sheikhun, and soldiers have started going in" to the town north of Hama, said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, reached by telephone.

Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi is ready to accept internationally supervised elections within three months, his son Seif al-Islam told an Italian newspaper on Thursday.

"Elections, immediately and with international supervision. It's the only painless way to break out of the impasse in Libya," Saif al-Islam told the daily Corriere della Sera correspondent in Tripoli.

Jordan's King Abdullah II expressed pessimism about the prospects of Middle East peace in an interview published Thursday, speaking openly about a "one-state solution" to the conflict.

"2011 will be, I think, a very bad year for peace," Abdullah told The Washington Post in an interview at his palace in the Jordanian capital.

Libyan rebels have captured three western villages on the road to Tripoli, as NATO insisted it could complete its mission without putting soldiers on the ground against strongman Moammar Gadhafi.

The Western military alliance which has carried out 10 weeks of air strikes against Gadhafi's forces can see out its mission without ground troops, its operations commander said in a briefing on an Italian aircraft carrier.

Syrian authorities on Wednesday showed journalists a "new mass grave," containing at least five corpses, buried near the flashpoint northern town of Jisr al-Shughour.

The remains, which lay under a pile of rubbish, had been placed in yellow and orange body bags, an Agence France Presse reporter, who was taken to the site by government minders alongside 20 other journalists, witnessed.

Human Rights Watch on Wednesday urged Emirati authorities to drop charges against five activists, including a blogger and a lecturer, facing trial for "criticizing" the government.

"The United Arab Emirates attorney general should immediately drop all charges against five pro-democracy activists to halt their trial," the New York-based watchdog said.

Libyan rebels captured two western villages on the road to Tripoli on Wednesday, as NATO insisted it could complete its mission without putting soldiers on the ground against strongman Moammar Gadhafi.

The Western military alliance which has carried out 10 weeks of air strikes against Gadhafi's forces can see out its mission without ground troops, its operations commander said in a briefing on an Italian aircraft carrier.

Five Iraqi soldiers were killed on Wednesday in a spate of shootings against patrols and checkpoints in Baghdad and the main northern city of Mosul, security officials said.

The violence, which also included a roadside bomb blast within an Iraqi army base that left 11 soldiers wounded, came just a day after attacks on government offices in central Iraq that killed seven people and mirrored a March raid claimed by al-Qaida.

Yemen said Wednesday it intercepted financial transfers made through Qatar to fund dissidents, warning the energy rich Gulf state to stop supporting divisions in the strife-torn country.

"The authorities have discovered transactions made through Qatar and the mediator in this is our former ambassador (in Cairo) Abdulwali al-Shumeiri," deputy information minister Abdo al-Janadi told reporters.