The major powers gave a cautious welcome on Thursday to proposals to send a joint Arab League-United Nations mission to monitor Syria's deadly crackdown on protests.

France said there had to be "guarantees" for the mission. The U.S. and German ambassadors to the United Nations said their countries were studying the idea raised by U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday.

Libya has ordered Syrian diplomats to leave the country within 72 hours, just days after the main Syrian opposition group took over Damascus's mission in Tripoli, the official news agency reported Thursday.

The Libyan foreign ministry has given "72 hours for the Syrian diplomats to leave the country," the official LANA news agency reported, quoting a ministry statement.

The Palestinian leadership on Thursday endorsed the latest agreement between the heads of Fatah and Hamas and called for preparations for elections to be speeded up.

Palestinian President and Fatah head Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal inked an accord in Doha on Monday placing Abbas at the head of an interim government to supervise the run-up to elections later this year.

A cold weather spell has killed at least 44 people in Algeria over the past week, sparking strong press criticism of what it sees as the government's poor response to the emergency situation.

Channel Three radio, quoting official sources, Thursday said 30 died in road accidents caused by the weather, and 14 of asphyxia because of poor heating devices.

A German couple and their child drowned in a tourist submarine accident on Thursday off Egypt's Red Sea resort town of Hurghada, security officials told AFP.

The victims were a German man, his wife and child, they said.

The opposition Syrian National Council gathered in Qatar on Thursday to prepare for meetings with regional blocs on their government's lethal crackdown on protests, an SNC spokesman told Agence France Presse.

The SNC executive committee talks come "before two important meetings, one for the Gulf Cooperation Council and another for the Arab League," both of which are to take place on Sunday in Cairo, Mohammed Sarmini said.

The Syrian city of Homs, dubbed "the capital of the revolution," has been under siege by regime forces and suffered the heaviest losses in the country's 11-month uprising.

With Damascus the political capital and the northern city of Aleppo the main commercial hub, Homs with its 1.6 million residents in central Syria represents the country's industrial lifeline.

Security forces killed 126 people in Syria on Thursday, 107 of them in Homs in the latest government blitz on the besieged city, said Local Coordination Committees.

Six people were killed in Maarat al-Naaman in Idlib, ten others in Reef Damascus, two in Ain al-Arab Koubani in Aleppo, and one in Latakia.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said on Thursday Germany was expelling four diplomats from the Syrian embassy in Berlin after the arrest of two men suspected of spying on regime opponents.

"After the arrest of two people suspected of spying for Syria, I have decided to expel four members of the Syrian embassy in Berlin," Westerwelle said in a statement.

China said Thursday it held talks with a key Syrian opposition group this week, amid fierce criticism of its decision to block a U.N. resolution condemning a bloody crackdown in the Middle East country.

China and Russia drew international ire for blocking the U.N. Security Council resolution on Saturday, with Washington calling their rejection a "travesty" and another Syrian opposition group saying they had handed President Bashar Assad's regime a "license to kill.”