Iran "will respond with full force" to any attack -- or even any threat of military action -- the country's supreme leader said Thursday, after Israel warned the world must act to prevent Tehran getting nuclear weapons.

Iran "will respond with full force to any aggression or even threats in a way that will demolish the aggressors from within," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told students at a Tehran military college, according to his official website.

Syria's Grand Mufti Ahmed Badreddin Hassoun, the country's highest religious authority, said on Thursday that Der Spiegel magazine misinterpreted his statements concerning Syrian President Bashar Assad’s resignation after he has implemented reforms.

“I only intended to explain the developments in Syria,” Hassoun wrote on his website.

Two dissident soldiers and two policemen were killed overnight in separate attacks in the country's restive south, army and security officials said on Thursday.

"A landmine planted by al-Qaida militants exploded Wednesday overnight killing two soldiers from the 119th Brigade commanded by dissident General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar," an army official told Agence France Presse.

Israel's Supreme Court on Thursday rejected an appeal lodged by former president Moshe Katsav, upholding his conviction on charges of rape and other sexual offences, press reports said.

The court also rejected an appeal against the seven-year sentence which he was handed in March.

An Egyptian pipeline delivering gas to Israel and Jordan was hit by two explosions Thursday, Egypt's security services and state media said, the seventh time it has been attacked by militants this year.

A first blast occurred around 1:00 am (23:00 GMT Wednesday) 40 kilometers west of the town of al-Arish in the north of the Sinai peninsula, a security source said.

Western nations on Wednesday condemned opponents of UN action against Syria with France accusing many Security Council powers of "indifference" toward killings being carried out by government forces.

A Security Council debate on protecting civilians reopened diplomatic wounds over the NATO airstrikes in Libya as well as the failure to agree to a stance on President Bashar al-Assad's deadly crackdown in Syria.

The world must act to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday after the release of a key report by the U.N.'s atomic watchdog.

"The significance of the report is that the international community must bring about the cessation of Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons which endanger the peace of the world and of the Middle East," he said in a statement issued by his office.

Syrian troops killed 12 civilians on Wednesday, five of whom were attending a funeral in Damascus and were caught up in the regime's continuing crackdown on dissent, a human rights group said.

However, local Syrian coordination committees reported that 25 people have been killed at the hands of Syrian security forces in Homs, Daraa, and Reef Hama on Wednesday, reported al-Arabiya television.

The arrest of Moammar Gadhafi's son Seif al-Islam is just a matter of time, the International Criminal Court's prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said Wednesday.

"The question is not if he will be arrested, it's when," Moreno-Ocampo told a press conference at the court's headquarters in The Hague.

Angry Syrian protesters pelted a group of opposition leaders with eggs outside Arab League headquarters in Cairo on Wednesday, preventing them from entering the building for talks with the organization's chief about the violence in Syria.

The scuffle highlights the deep divisions within the Syrian opposition, which is struggling to overcome infighting and inexperience eight months into the uprising against President Bashar Assad's autocratic regime.