World powers should push for tough United Nations sanctions against Syria in order to force Bashar al-Assad's regime to comply with a U.N. peace plan, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday.

"We need to start moving very vigorously in the Security Council for a Chapter Seven sanctions resolution," Clinton told international envoys at talks in Paris.

The rebel Free Syrian Army called for outside military intervention against the Damascus regime even without U.N. Security Council approval, in a video posted online on Thursday.

General Mustafa Ahmed al-Sheikh, who heads the SLA military council, charged that the government, unlike rebel fighters had failed to respect a ceasefire deal agreed with U.N.-Arab League mediator Kofi Annan.

A coalition of Western and Middle East powers warned on Thursday that they would seek tougher international action if Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime continues to flout a shaky U.N. peace plan.

Senior officials, including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, accused Assad of breaking the ceasefire and said a U.N. observer mission would have to be dramatically reinforced.

Fresh violence raged across Syria on Thursday even as authorities in Damascus penned an agreement aimed at putting a stop to 13 months of bloodshed.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said security forces killed four civilians across the country, but the Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, reported a higher death toll.

Iraq's parliament on Thursday voted to extend by three months the terms of nine members of the electoral commission, including its chief and a colleague detained last week on suspicion of corruption.

"The majority of the 197 MPs present voted to extend the mandate of the nine leaders of the IHEC in order to able to choose their replacements," Shiite MP Aziz al-Okaili told Agence France Presse, referring to the Independent High Electoral Commission.

The CIA is seeking permission to launch more airborne drone strikes in Yemen, even when there is a risk the victims might not always be terrorists, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

The targets would be chosen based on intelligence reports indicating suspicious behavior, such as images of militants unloading explosives or gathering at al-Qaida compounds.

Violence marred Bahrain's controversial Grand Prix race as a firebomb exploded near Force India team members and protesters clashed with police in the lead-up to the Formula One practice runs set to begin on Friday.

The incident prompted F1 officials to reassure participants that despite the violence, Bahrain was safe.

Egyptian Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa's visit to Jerusalem caused a stir on Thursday in his own country, where normalization of ties with Israel remains a highly sensitive issue.

The powerful Muslim Brotherhood called the trip a "catastrophe" that undermined Palestinian aspirations, and Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam's highest authority, was to meet to discuss the issue.

Western and Arab foreign ministers were to meet in Paris on Thursday for talks on the Syria crisis, with France warning Russia that its refusal to attend was plunging it deeper into isolation.

"I regret that Russia continues to lock itself into a vision that isolates it more and more, not just from the Arab world but also from the international community," Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told journalists.

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood on Thursday denounced the visit by the nation's grand mufti, Ali Gomaa, to Jerusalem, calling it as a "catastrophe" that undermined the Palestinian aspirations.

Gomaa, Egypt's highest religious authority, visited the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in east Jerusalem on Wednesday for the first time, along with Jordan's Prince Ghazi bin Mohammed, King Abdullah II's cousin and adviser on religious issues.