New satellite images released by a U.S. research institute show Syria "tried to become a nuclear power," a senior Israeli defense official said on Friday.

Amos Gilad, director of political military affairs at the defense ministry, told army radio that the new images released by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) proved Syria was seeking nuclear weapons.

Two Iranian warships, the first to enter the Mediterranean from the Suez Canal since 1979, docked at the Syrian port of Latakia on Thursday, an Iranian diplomatic source told Agence France Presse in Damascus.

Israel has put its navy on high alert, denounced the ships' arrival in the region as an Iranian power play and branded their voyage "a provocation."

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi on Thursday accused residents of Az-Zawiyah, a town west of the capital hit by fierce fighting between his forces and rebels, of being linked to Osama bin Laden, warning that the U.S. might intervene in Libya "under the alibi of combating al-Qaida."

In what was said to be a live audio feed on state television, Gadhafi also accused the protesters of being on drugs.

Satellite photos published by a Washington think tank on Wednesday appear to show Syrian efforts to conceal a second suspected nuclear site allegedly linked to a reactor bombed by Israel in 2007.

The photos acquired by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) indicate Syria tried to cover up its nuclear activities after the air raid, and could lead the U.N. nuclear watchdog to step up demands for inspections.

Forty-nine Somali migrants drowned when their boat capsized during heavy winds in the Gulf of Aden off Yemen's southern coast, the Yemeni interior ministry said Thursday.

The migrants who were attempting to reach Yemen, "drowned off the coast of Bir Ali in the south ... when their boat capsized four nautical miles offshore" during a wind storm on Tuesday, a ministry statement said.

Israeli jets bombed several Hamas camps in the Gaza Strip early Thursday after Palestinians fired a rocket that slammed into a house in a southern Israeli city, the military said.

There were no immediate reports of casualties in the air force strikes or from the rocket that landed in the city of Beersheva, the first time the city has been targeted since Israel's devastating 2009 Gaza offensive.

An Israeli tank wounded eleven Palestinians, two critically, when it opened fire on a group of militants east of Gaza City on Wednesday, an emergency services spokesman said.

"Eleven Palestinians were injured by tank shell in an area east of Gaza City. Two of them are in critical condition," Adham Abu Selmiya of the Hamas-run rescue service told Agence France Presse, saying they had been taken to the city's Shifa hospital.

The NATO military alliance said Wednesday it was monitoring two Iranian warships that have entered the Mediterranean Sea, a presence that has unnerved Israel.

"We follow events in the region and we follow these two Iranian warships with as much interest as we do any other warships in the region," said NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu.

Europe moved Wednesday to isolate Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, with France calling for sanctions and a freeze in financial relations while Italy accused the veteran strongman of perpetrating a bloodbath.

With hundreds killed in a week of raging protests, Europe has struggled with how to exercise leverage against Gadhafi, in power for more than 41 years and whose country provides Europe with a large slice of its energy needs.

A fighter pilot disobeyed orders on Wednesday to bomb the opposition stronghold of Benghazi and ditched his plane after he and his co-pilot ejected, a Libyan newspaper reported on its website.

The Russian-made Sukhoi 22 crashed near Ajdabiya, 160 kilometers west of the city which has fallen to anti-regime protesters, a military source said, quoted in Quryna newspaper.