At least 40 people were killed in an ammunitions depot blast Thursday in a government-held area of Homs in central Syria apparently triggered by rebel rocket fire, a monitoring group said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which earlier reported 22 killed, warned that the death toll could rise further as many of the 100 people wounded were in serious condition.

Israel on Thursday charged an ultra-Orthodox Jew with spying for Iran, the Jewish state's internal security service said.

The man belonged to Neturei Karta, an ultra-Orthodox group opposed to the existence of the state of Israel, and he is suspected by Shin Bet internal security of having contacted Iran's embassy in Berlin in 2011 to offer intelligence.

Egypt's Interior Ministry urged supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi on Thursday to evacuate their Cairo protest camps, promising them a "safe exit."

The ministry "calls on those in Rabaa al-Adawiya and Nahda squares to let reason and the national interest prevail, and to quickly leave," it said in a statement, a day after the government ordered police to end the protests.

Bahrain's King Hamad has decreed stiffer penalties for "terror acts" in the country rocked by a Shiite-led uprising since 2011, the official BNA news agency said Thursday.

Under a new law, suspects convicted for bomb attacks will be sentenced to life imprisonment or to death in cases of casualties, BNA said. The minimum penalty for an attempted bombing is 10 years behind bars.

Buildings flattened like pancakes, roads filled with war debris, its famous mosque battle-scarred, the Syrian government's recapture of a rebel district of flashpoint Homs came at a high cost.

The Khaldiyeh district of the reputed "capital of the revolution" against President Bashar Assad looks like it has been mangled by the steel jaws of an enraged giant.

He was kidnapped in Syria by an armed group, held by Islamists and freed by a pro-Assad official -- Jonathan Alpeyrie spent 81 days in captivity in one of the world's most dangerous countries.

In a detailed account of his ordeal to weekly Paris Match, the 34-year-old photographer -- who returned to France last week after being released -- recalled mock executions and scenes of torture.

Israel's parliament took a first step late Wednesday towards reining in the country's extreme form of proportional representation in a bid to make governments more stable.

The bill, which is backed by larger parties but strongly opposed by smaller factions representing Israeli Arabs and ultra-Orthodox Jews, was approved at first reading by 64 votes to 49 with one abstention.

Supporters of ousted Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi pledged to defy a crackdown ordered by the army-installed interim government, as diplomats scrambled on Thursday to broker an end to the crisis.

Morsi's Islamist backers said they would hold a "march of the millions" on Friday, and denounced the orders given to police by the interim cabinet to end their Cairo sit-ins.

Syrian President Bashar Assad made a visit on Thursday to the town of Daraya outside Damascus, a former rebel bastion now mainly under government control, state television reported.

The broadcaster aired no immediate footage to accompany its report.

A U.S. drone killed four a-Qaida supects in Yemen Thursday, a security official said, the third such strike in five days as the Yemeni president prepared for White House talks.

Yemen's U.S.-backed campaign against al-Qaida in the Arabian Pensinsula (AQAP) was expected to be high on the agenda of Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi's talks with President Barack Obama later on Thursday.