U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday condemned the latest onslaught of violence sponsored by the regime in Syria and said President Bashar Assad had to go.

"The regime-sponsored violence that we witnessed in Hama yesterday (Wednesday) is simply unconscionable," she told reporters.

Iraq on Thursday executed Saddam Hussein's presidential secretary and chief bodyguard Abid Hamid Mahmoud, justice ministry spokesman Haidar al-Saadi said.

"He was executed today," Saadi said, adding: "The ministry of justice implemented the execution sentence against the criminal Abd Hmoud... for genocide," referring to Mahmoud by the name Iraqis call him.

The Syrian army is preventing U.N. observers from reaching a farmland region where at least 55 people were reportedly killed by militants loyal to President Bashar Assad, activists said Thursday.

Jordan decided to temporarily “postpone” and “cancel” any official visits to Lebanon, media reports said on Thursday.

A high-ranking source told “al-Arab al-Yawm” that Jordanian Prime Minister Fayez al-Tarawneh ordered to currently halt any official visits to Beirut.

State Commissioner to the Military Court Judge Saqr Saqr charged on Thursday members of the Syrian army for killing al-Jadeed TV cameraman Ali Shaaban in the northern area of Wadi Khaled two months ago.

Saqr also charged the unknown soldiers with the attempted murder of Shaaban’s colleagues, reporter Hussein Khreiss and cameraman Abed Khayyat, after opening fire on them from the Syrian side of the border near Wadi Khaled on April 9.

Russian President Vladimir Putin told his Iranian counterpart on Thursday that Moscow supports Tehran's atomic program as long as it is "peaceful".

"We have always supported the right of the Iranian people to modern technologies, including the peaceful use of atomic energy," he told Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the sidelines of a regional security summit in Beijing.

Attacks in central Iraq left five security members dead and an alleged al-Qaida fighter killed two prison guards Thursday, amid a recent spike in unrest that has broken a relative calm in Baghdad.

The violence comes just days after a suicide car bomb outside Iraq's Shiite religious foundation's headquarters in Baghdad killed 25 people, and during a protracted political crisis that has raised sectarian tensions.

The Islamist group Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for the killing of a former Nigerian deputy police chief in the northern city of Kano and vowed more of such attacks.

"Yesterday God gave us victory and we succeeded in killing a former DIG (deputy inspector general)... in Kano city," the sect said in an email statement to reporters late Wednesday.

Five people were wounded on Thursday in a blaze that engulfed a number of Syrian refugee tents in Akkar, reported the National News Agency.

It said that two people suffered light burns and three people fainted in the fire that completely destroyed 20 tents in the town of Bourj al-Arab in Akkar.

Syrian authorities thwarted an attempt by an “armed terrorist group” to infiltrate Syria from northern Lebanon, Syrian Arab News Agency, SANA, reported Thursday.

It quoted a source in Reef Tall Kalakh as saying that one member of the group was injured while the rest escaped back to Lebanon during a clash with “concerned authorities.”