Yemeni warplanes and ground troops launched a dawn assault on Wednesday on al-Qaida positions in the restive southern Abyan province, killing 10 militants, local officials said.

Seven militants were killed inside Jaar when hit by artillery shells fired by troops from west of the city, a local official told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.

Qatar issued arrest orders for the owner of a fire-ravaged mall and four others as investigations widened Wednesday into possible safety lapses during a blaze that killed 19 people, including 13 children at a daycare center catering to the Gulf nation's large expatriate community.

The official Qatar News Agency said Attorney General Ali bin Feitais al-Marri also ordered the detention of the owner of the child care facility where the children and four workers died in Monday's fire at the Gulf nation's biggest mall. The others facing arrest are mall officials, including the director of security.

Russia said on Wednesday it was "premature" for the U.N. Security Council to take new action on Syria after the massacre of 108 civilians in the city of Houla.

"We believe that a review now by the Security Council of any new measures on the situation would be premature," Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov told the Interfax news agency.

Fierce fighting erupted on Wednesday between regime troops and rebels near Damascus and in Homs province, a watchdog said, while reporting 39 more people killed across Syria.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said five people were killed in the Damascus suburb of Douma, a hotbed of anti-regime sentiment, while a civilian was shot dead in Daraya, in the same province.

Japan and Turkey lined up on Wednesday with many of their Western allies who have kicked out Syrian diplomats as international outrage grows over brutal mass slayings blamed on the government in Damascus.

Japan has told the Syrian ambassador in Tokyo to leave the country, the foreign ministry said.

Iran condemned Kuwait on Tuesday for sentencing two Iranians, a Kuwaiti and a stateless man to life in prison for spying for Iran and demanded they be released.

On Monday, Kuwait's appeals court reduced a death sentence on the two Iranians and the Kuwaiti to life and upheld the stateless man's sentence.

French President Francois Hollande said on Tuesday that the use of armed force could be possible in Syria following the Houla massacre, but that it had to be carried out under U.N. auspices.

"An armed intervention is not excluded on the condition that it is carried out with respect to international law, meaning after deliberation by the United Nations Security Council," Hollande said in a television interview.

A top U.N. official said Tuesday there are "strong" suspicions that a militia loyal to Syria's President Bashar Assad carried out a massacre in the town of Houla which has sparked international condemnation.

"There is strong suspicion that the Shabiha were involved in this tragedy in Houla," U.N. peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous told reporters at the U.N. headquarters.

Belgium declared the Syrian ambassador and two diplomats "persona non grata" Tuesday to protest the Houla massacre while raising the prospect of "a military presence" that was short of intervention.

Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said however that Syria's ambassador -- Mohammad Ayman Jameel Soussan -- could not be expelled immediately as he was also ambassador to the European Union.

The United States said Tuesday that it hopes the massacre in Syria sparks a "turning point" in Russia's reluctance to take tougher action against Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Washington welcomes the fact "that the Russians are willing to have a full investigation (of the massacre) because we think it's undisputable what that investigation is going to show," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.