Seif al-Islam, the detained son of Libya's late dictator Moammar Gadhafi, appeared in court Thursday charged with illegally trying to communicate with the outside world last June, an Agence France Presse journalist reported.

The man once assumed to be his father's heir appeared in good health, wearing blue clothes, at the hearing in the western town of Zintan.

April was the deadliest month for Iraq in nearly five years, with more than 700 people killed in violence, the United Nations said on Thursday.

"The month of April was the deadliest since June 2008. A total of 712 people were killed and another 1,633 were wounded in acts of terrorism and acts of violence," a statement from the U.N. mission in Iraq said.

General Haggai Mordechai may not believe there will be a third Palestinian intifada, but this former commander of Israeli troops in the West Bank says the security situation remains "fragile".

"We are keeping our finger on the pulse," he said in an interview with Agence France Presse.

A bomb destroyed a police station in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi early on Thursday but caused no casualties, a security source told Agence France Presse, in a second attack targeting the building.

"An explosive device was thrown at Al-Baraka police station in Benghazi, destroying what remained of the building after the bomb attack that targeted it last weekend," the source said.

Five Saudis have died of a new SARS-like virus during the past few days and two more are being treated in an intensive care unit, the health ministry said.

In a statement cited by the Saudi SPA agency late on Wednesday, the ministry said that all the deaths occurred in the Ahsaa province in the oil-rich eastern region of the kingdom.

U.S. authorities on Wednesday released pictures of three men it said were present during the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. mission in eastern Libya, saying it wanted to question them.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation's website did not say whether the three men -- all of whom appear to be carrying guns in the pictures -- are suspects in the attack that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.

A prominent opponent of Egypt's President Mohamed Morsi has been detained on suspicion of insulting the Islamist leader, the activist's lawyer said on Wednesday.

Ahmed Douma, a blogger and activist who has called for Morsi's trial over the shooting deaths of protesters, was ordered held for four days by prosecutors in the Nile Delta city of Tanta, lawyer Ali Soliman told Agence France Presse.

Police in Sunni Muslim-ruled Bahrain fired tear gas on Wednesday to disperse demonstrators demanding the reinstatement of Shiites sacked from their jobs during pro-democracy protests two years ago, witnesses said.

Dozens of people came out onto the streets in Shiite villages around Manama on the occasion of May Day shouting: "We want those people sacked to be reinstated."

Iraqi Kurdish ministers and MPs will end boycotts of parliament and the cabinet begun in March, the prime minister of the autonomous Kurdistan region said on Wednesday.

A meeting that included Kurdish political parties "decided to return the Kurdish ministers and representatives to Baghdad... and participate in sessions of the Iraqi cabinet and parliament," Nechirvan Barzani told a news conference in Arbil.

U.N.-Arab League Syria peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi is on the verge of quitting amid growing frustration at deadlocked international efforts to end the worsening conflict, diplomats said Wednesday.

Brahimi, who took over from former U.N. leader Kofi Annan in August last year, is "itching to resign but being persuaded to hang on for a few more days," said one U.N. Security Council diplomat.