Syrian civilians are facing "horrific" violence as the battle for the commercial capital Aleppo rages, Amnesty International said Thursday, lashing out primarily at regime troops for launching indiscriminate attacks.

"The use of imprecise weapons, such as unguided bombs, artillery shells and mortars by government forces has dramatically increased the danger for civilians," Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International Senior Crisis Response Adviser, who recently returned from Aleppo, said in a statement.

A Nepalese farmer who was bitten by a venomous snake took revenge by sinking his teeth into the reptile and killing it, police said on Thursday.

Mohamed Salmo Miya was farming near his village 200 kilometers (125 miles) southeast of Kathmandu when he encountered the deadly common cobra, district police chief Uma Prasad Chatrubedi told Agence France Presse.

Four people were killed Thursday and over 18 injured, six of them seriously, when a hot air balloon crashed and caught fire in Slovenia, the country's civil protection administration said.

Among the injured were a British woman and three Italians, the Ljubljana Clinical Centre where many of the injured were brought, also said.

Flash floods triggered by heavy rain have killed more than 20 people and destroyed hundreds of houses in northern Pakistan, officials said on Thursday.

Irshad Bhatti, a spokesman for the country's National Disaster Management Authority, said the extent of the damage was still being assessed.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas is waging "diplomatic terror" against Israel, which is as dangerous as the violent threat posed by Hamas, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Thursday.

It was his second personal attack on the Palestinian president in days and came after he called for world powers to force elections in the Palestinian Authority in a bid to replace him and revive the stagnant peace process.

Egyptian editor Islam Afifi, who is facing charges of spreading false news and was remanded in custody Thursday, will be freed following a presidential decree scrapping preventive detention in the case of publishing crimes.

"Al-Dustour chief editor Islam Afifi will be released according to the (presidential) decree," which scraps preventive detention in the case of publishing crimes, said Yasser Ali, spokesman of President Mohammed Morsi.

Iraq expects to receive the first group of F-16 warplanes next year, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's spokesman said on Thursday, after U.S. officials said the aircraft would not arrive until 2014.

"Iraq is waiting to receive the first group of the F-16 warplanes in March 2013," Ali Mussawi told Agence France Presse.

Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi said on Thursday that Italy will host international talks "in the coming days" on the future of Syria after President Bashar Assad leaves power.

Italy "has proposed informal talks in Rome in the next few days with a group of allies and partner countries to discuss international roles and responsibilities in Syria after Assad," Terzi wrote in La Repubblica daily.

Four foreign oil workers who were kidnapped when unknown gunmen attacked their vessel in the Gulf of Guinea off Nigeria on August 4 have been released, their employer Sea Trucks Group said Thursday.

"They were released last night," company spokeswoman Corrie van Kessel told Agence France Presse, regarding the Indonesian, Iranian, Malaysian and Thai nationals.

Clashes broke out overnight between Kurdish rebels and Turkish soldiers in the volatile southeastern Turkey, leaving 21 people dead, local security sources told Agence France Presse on Thursday.

Sixteen members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) were killed in the fighting that erupted after the rebels ambushed a military convoy, killing five Turkish soldiers, said the sources.