The United States said Thursday that the new Taliban office in Qatar must not be treated as an embassy, as Afghanistan angrily condemned the "theatrical" opening of the new mission.

The Taliban's "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan" nameplate on the office in Doha has been at the center of a battle between President Hamid Karzai and the United States over U.S. contacts with the Afghan militant group.

Israel's fraud squad on Thursday questioned Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yona Metzger on suspicion of bribery, theft, breach of trust and money laundering, a police statement said.

Metzger's questioning at the national fraud unit headquarters in Lod, south of Tel Aviv, comes after months of covert investigations involving three other suspects, according to police.

European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton called on Thursday from Gaza for a relief of the Israeli blockade on the Palestinian territory, ruled by the Islamist Hamas movement.

"It is World Refugee Day and I chose to be here on this day," Ashton said in remarks relayed by her office.

A U.N. human rights watchdog on Thursday accused Israel's police and military of abuses against Palestinian children ranging from torture to solitary confinement and threats of death and sexual assault in prisons.

In a report on Israel's record, the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child said it expressed its "deepest concern about the reported practice of torture and ill-treatment of Palestinian children arrested, prosecuted and detained by the military and the police".

Angelina Jolie said Thursday the Syrian civil war is the world's most acute humanitarian crisis and called on world leaders to make diplomatic efforts to end it succeed.

Jolie spoke at Jordan's largest camp for Syrian refugees, which she toured as special envoy for the United Nations refugee agency.

A Palestinian found guilty of "collaborating" with Israel has been sentenced to death by a military court in the Gaza Strip, the interior ministry of Hamas, which controls the territory, said on Thursday.

The defendant, identified only by his initials KC, was "condemned to capital punishment by hanging for collaborating with the Zionist occupier," ministry spokesman Islam Shahwan announced on Facebook.

Authorities in Egypt have valued the wealth of former dictator Hosni Mubarak, his wife and their two sons at nine billion Egyptian pounds ($1.2 billion, 900 million euros), the state prosecutor said Thursday.

It is the first time that an official source has given a figure for the Mubaraks' wealth, the subject of speculation since a popular uprising in February 2011 toppled the regime.

Palestinian prime minister Rami Hamdallah offered his resignation to president Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday, just two weeks after he took office, a high-ranking government official told Agence France Presse.

Hamdallah "presented his resignation in writing to the president following disagreements with his two deputies," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Kuwait's cabinet said on Thursday that it has approved a decree setting a legislative election for July 25 after the constitutional court scrapped parliament and upheld a controversial electoral law.

"The cabinet at an extraordinary session approved a draft decree setting July 25 as the date for parliamentary elections," State Minister for Cabinet Affairs Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah al-Sabah told the official KUNA news agency.

Syrian rebels urged friendly world powers on Thursday to provide them with heavier weapons and to impose a no-fly zone over parts of the country they control to avert a humanitarian disaster.

On the ground, troops and rebels battled in several districts and suburbs of Damascus, and the army shelled insurgent positions using heavy artillery and mortars, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.