The Israeli army started calling up 16,000 reservists on Friday, as officials said the Jewish state was preparing for a possible ground offensive into the Gaza Strip.

"They're distributing emergency call-up notices now, the process has started," an army spokeswoman told Agence France Presse.

U.S. senators got their first look Thursday at dramatic video footage of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi as they probed the government's response to the deadly September 11 assault in Libya.

Four Americans were killed in the attack including the U.S. ambassador, Chris Stevens, and President Barack Obama's administration is under fire over security at the consulate and for its evolving narrative about the assault.

Middle East peace envoy Tony Blair called on Hamas on Thursday to stop firing rockets from Gaza into Israel, saying that as long as it continued the Jewish state would act to defend itself.

"If the rocket fire carries on out of Gaza, targeted at Israeli towns and villages, then the retaliation will increase," the former British prime minister told Sky News television in London.

France raised the prospect on Thursday of providing Syria's rebels with defensive weapons as Turkey joined it and the Gulf Arab states in recognizing the newly unified opposition.

France said it would discuss its proposal to ease the European Union arms embargo on both sides in the 20-month-conflict with its partners in the 27-nation bloc, but Russia said any such move would be a violation of international law.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Thursday approved the call-up of 30,000 reserve soldiers, who can be called into action by the military at any point, the army's official spokesman said.

"We are in the process of expanding the campaign," Brigadier General Yoav Mordechai told Channel 2 television as Israel pressed a massive air campaign against Gaza militants.

The United States is calling on Egypt to use its sway with the Palestinians to try to end the violence from Gaza, a top U.S. official said Thursday, adding Hamas must stop its rocket attacks on Israel.

"We ask Egypt to use its influence in the region to help de-escalate the situation," deputy State Department spokesman Mark Toner said, adding that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had spoken with her Egyptian counterpart.

Moroccan children as young as eight, recruited as domestic workers, are frequently beaten, verbally abused and sometimes refused adequate food by their employers, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday.

Child domestic workers in Morocco, most of them girls, sometimes work for 12 hours a day, seven days a week, and receive as little as $11 (8.60 euros) a month, HRW said in a report entitled "Lonely Servitude: Child Domestic Labor in Morocco."

The United States on Thursday blamed Hamas for an explosion of violence in Gaza after salvoes of rockets were fired into Israel in retaliation for the killing of the group's military chief.

Expressing regret for the victims on both sides of the conflict, White House spokesman Jay Carney said there was "no justification" for the violence on the part of Hamas, saying it "does nothing to help the Palestinians."

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday urged both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Palestinians to avoid escalating Gaza violence that has killed 15 Palestinians and three Israelis.

"The president of Russia called on the parties to exercise restraint and avoid the path of escalating violence, whose victims include civilians, and to do everything to return the situation to its normal course," the Kremlin said following a telephone conversation between Putin and Netanyahu.

Israel will take "whatever action is necessary" to defend its citizens from Palestinian rocket attacks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday as Gaza's Hamas rulers noted that the current conflict “will shorten the era of occupation.”

Netanyahu's remarks at a televised press conference in Tel Aviv came after Israel carried out 24 hours of air strikes on Gaza, killing 15 Palestinians, at least seven of them Hamas militants.