Moroccan customs authorities on Thursday incinerated 9.5 tonnes of cannabis resin in a suburb of Casablanca, official media reported, days after record hashish hauls in neighboring Spain.

The drugs, which were seized in two separate operations last year by customs authorities at Casablanca port, were burned in the presence of government officials, police and members of the royal gendarmerie, the MAP news agency reported.

The threat Islamist militants posed to Tunisia under ousted dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was worse than the current threat, the ruling Islamist party Ennahda's leader Rached Ghannouchi said on Thursday.

"What happened in Soliman and Rouhia was worse than what is currently happening in Mont Chaambi, even if it is a massive crime," he told a news conference.

Fighting raged on Thursday in flashpoints across Syria, among them Barzeh in northern Damascus, a watchdog said.

Southwest of Damascus, the regime's air force bombarded rebel positions located between rebel strongholds Daraya and Moadamiyet al-Sham, which the regime has been fighting to reclaim since last year, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Syria on Thursday welcomed a U.S.-Russian initiative to find a political solution to its conflict, counting on ally Moscow to stand firm, even as Washington said President Bashar Assad would have to step down.

U.S. Secretary John Kerry, who announced the initiative earlier this week, said the embattled president would have to step down as part of the resolution to the conflict.

An American was stabbed in the neck as he came out of the U.S. embassy in central Cairo on Thursday, a security official told Agence France Presse.

The American was rushed to hospital after the attack in Cairo's Garden City neighborhood near Tahrir Square, which houses several embassies and has seen a rise in crime and unrest in recent months.

Former president Mohammad Khatami has expressed doubts about running in Iran's presidential election on June 14, saying his participation could weaken the reformist movement, local media reported on Thursday.

Khatami, reformist head of state from 1997 to 2005, and his predecessor, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, moderate president from 1989 to 1997, have yet to decide whether to contest the polls to succeed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Israel on Thursday formally apologized to Cairo after police violence against Egyptian diplomats during the Holy Fire ceremony at Jerusalem's Holy Sepulcher church on Orthodox Easter.

"I presented on our behalf a formal apology during a meeting with an Egyptian diplomat because in incidents like this it is good to lower the flames," Deputy Foreign Minister Zeev Elkin told public radio.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has proposed classing Syria's powerful jihadist group Al-Nusra Front a terrorist organisation, while boosting support for the moderate opposition.

"We are going to increase our support to the moderate opposition, the National Syrian Coalition," Fabius said in Friday's edition of Le Monde newspaper.

Tunisian police have arrested a Libyan "terrorist" as he was trying to enter the south of the country with a "quantity of explosives," the interior ministry said on Thursday.

"The anti-terrorism task force with the help of units from the national guard arrested on Wednesday, May 8 a Libyan trying to enter with a quantity of explosives... The arrest took place after this terrorist was closely followed," it said.

Press reports warned Thursday that Tunisia was "at war with international terrorism" after the government revealed that jihadists being pursued by the army have ties to al-Qaida and the Islamist rebellion in Mali.

French-language daily Le Temps raised fears of "a spiral of deadly violence similar to the one that ravaged Algeria" during its so-called black decade of civil war in the 1990s.