Sheikh Abbas Zgheib, who has been tasked by the Higher Islamic Shiite Council to follow up the case of the abducted Lebanese pilgrims in Syria, stressed on Thursday that they are well.

“The officials who are concerned with the matter are following up the case with the Turkish authorities,” Zgheib said in comments to Voice of Lebanon radio (93.3).

Turkey's Islamic-rooted government is set to submit a new legal package that would tune its often criticized anti-terrorism laws to European standards, parliamentary sources said Wednesday.

"The changes we have prepared will enable Turkey to move forward in the path of the rule of law and expand freedom of expression," said Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin.

Qatar has handed the Syrian embassy building in Doha to the National Coalition, Syria's main opposition group, a statement said on Wednesday.

"Qatar has decided to hand over the Syrian embassy building in Doha to Mr Nizar al-Haraki after his appointment as ambassador to Doha for the National Coalition," the Coalition statement said.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday condemned a deadly blast in a minibus on the Turkey-Syria border amid concern that violence in Syria would spill over to its neighbors, a spokesman said.

The vehicle exploded on Monday in the buffer zone between Turkey's Cilvegozu border crossing and Syria's Bab al-Hawa post, which was seized by Syrian rebels in July. Fourteen people died.

Israel has authorized Turkey to send staff and equipment to a new hospital which is under construction in the Gaza Strip following a diplomatic request from Ankara, an Israeli official said on Tuesday.

An Israeli newspaper considered close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the approval was a gesture aimed at thawing relations between the one-time allies which became icy following a 2010 Israeli raid on a ship seeking to break the Jewish state's Gaza blockade, in which nine Turkish activists were killed.

Fifteen Kurds have been arrested in southwestern France in an anti-terror probe into extortion rackets used to raise funds for the outlawed Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK), legal sources said Tuesday.

The people arrested in the cities of Bordeaux and Toulouse are suspected of being senior figures within the regional structure of the organization, the sources said.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday that a powerful blast in a minibus on the Syrian border which killed 14 people was a bomb attack.

"A vehicle loaded with bombs was able to reach our customs gate because the customs gate on the Syrian side is not working and is not being controlled," Erdogan told parliament after Monday's incident.

At least 13 people were killed and dozens wounded when a Syrian mini-bus exploded Monday near the border between Turkey and Syria, officials said, though the cause was not immediately clear.

"All possibilities are on the table, including political motives," Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said after unidentified explosives triggered the "powerful blast".

A 19-year-old Kurdish man was killed late Sunday when a home-made grenade exploded in his hands during a demonstration in Turkey's Kurdish-majority southeast, local authorities said.

The man was one of 100 demonstrators who had gathered in Diyarbakir city to protest ahead of the 14th anniversary of jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan's capture in Kenya on February 15.

Bassam al-Dada, an adviser to the commander of the rebel Free Syrian Army, has denied reports that the kidnapper of Lebanese pilgrims in Syria was killed.

Al-Liwaa daily on Monday quoted al-Dada as saying that Amar al-Dadikhi of the rebel North Storm brigade, also known as Abu Ibrahim, who last May kidnapped 11 Lebanese pilgrims on their way home from Iran, was being held in Turkey.