France will seek to organize a ministerial-level U.N. Security Council meeting on Syria before the end of August, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said in a statement on Wednesday.

France currently holds the rotating chair of the Security Council and Fabius had said on Monday that Paris would try to organize a meeting before the end of this week.

Angry Muslims attacked a church and Christian homes outside Cairo on Wednesday, sparking clashes that wounded 16 people, a security official said, after a Muslim died of wounds from a fight with a Christian.

Police fired tear gas to prevent the mob setting fire to the church but the crowd returned and torched several homes in the village of Dahshur as well as three police cars, the official said.

Bahraini police have arrested three suspects over "terrorist activities" after seizing materials that can be used to manufacture explosives, the public security chief said on Wednesday.

Major General Tariq al-Hassan said in remarks to the press that police are still searching for three other suspects.

President Vladimir Putin will strongly defend Russia's position on the Syria conflict when he meets British Prime Minister David Cameron in London on Thursday, his spokesman said.

"We expect to have another opportunity to continue our dialogue and explain to the British side our well-argued, consistent and absolutely clear position on the (Syria) problem," spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian news agencies.

Seven Iranian Red Crescent workers who were abducted by an armed group in the Libyan city of Benghazi are being held and questioned by a local militia, a security official told Agence France Presse on Wednesday.

"Members of the brigade holding the Iranians are questioning them to determine whether their activities and intentions aimed to spread the doctrine of Shiite Islam," the security official said on condition of anonymity.

Egypt's prosecutor general appealed on Wednesday against the outcome of the trial of Hosni Mubarak and several of his senior officials over deaths in the uprising that unseated the veteran strongman.

The prosecutor called for the June 2 verdicts to be annulled and for a new trial to be held.

A bomb blast shook the department of military intelligence in the eastern city of Benghazi early Wednesday, causing material damage to the building, Libyan security sources said.

"The department of military intelligence was bombed," a senior security officer told Agence France Presse, adding that the level of damage to the two-story building suggested it was hit by an improvised explosive device.

The World Food Program has sent supplies to Syria's commercial capital Aleppo to help tackle shortages triggered by escalating clashes between troops and rebels, the U.N. agency said on Wednesday.

The WFP "has sent food assistance for distribution to 28,000 people in Aleppo over the next few days, following reports of shortages of food, gas and electricity following weeks of violence," a statement said.

Turkey's military on Wednesday tested its tanks' speed and maneuverability during an exercise in Turkey's southeastern border near Syria, reported the Anatolia news agency.

The exercise comes after Turkey sent a convoy of tanks, weapons and ground-to-air missile batteries to the border with Syria, strengthening its defenses there as intensified on the other side of the border.

Tribal negotiations are ongoing with Yemeni authorities to free within "two days" an Italian embassy security agent kidnapped in Sanaa over the weekend, his abductor told a local news website on Wednesday.

"There is tribal mediation... and hopefully the matter will be resolved tonight, tomorrow, or over the coming two days," Ali Naser Huraidkan said according to a private Internet site close to Yemeni tribes, marebpress.net.