EU leaders agreed Wednesday to send a civilian border assistance mission to Libya which should begin operations next month.

The mission, dubbed EUBAM Libya, will help the country re-establish effective controls at its land, sea and air borders.

Libyan army special forces have arrested an armed group in the eastern city of Benghazi in possession of hundreds of anti-tank mines and material for making explosives, the LANA news agency reported on Wednesday.

A security source was quoted as saying "220 anti-tank mines as well as equipment for manufacturing explosives were seized" and that one of the soldiers was wounded in clashes during the raid.

Armed men on Monday attacked Mellitah gas complex in western Libya, wounding a soldier and a leader of the brigade which guards the complex, the official Lana news agency reported.

"An armed group attacked at dawn the Mellitah gas complex wounding the commander of the brigade responsible for the security of the plant and a soldier," it quoted a military source as saying.

An Algerian court sentenced 14 Malian members of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) to 20 years' jail for arms smuggling and entering the country illegally, El Khabar daily reported Monday.

The Malians, who were sentenced on Sunday by the criminal court in the southern town of Ouargla, were accused of entering Algeria illegally with a shipment of weapons from Libya, the Arabic-language daily said.

A bomb exploded Saturday in a Tripoli street housing the Algerian, Greek and Saudi embassies, lightly damaging a car, hours after a soldier was wounded in a bombing in Libya's second city Benghazi.

A security source said the homemade bomb, locally known as "gelatina", had been placed near a car on a street in the central district of Dahra where the three embassies are located.

A drive-by bomb attack on a checkpoint in the heart of Libya's restive second city of Benghazi slightly wounded a soldier early on Saturday, a security official told AFP.

"A bomb was thrown from a car at an army checkpoint at the Dubail crossroads in the center of Benghazi," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

An explosion inside a school in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi caused damage but no injuries on Friday, the Muslim weekend when the facility was empty, the state-run news agency Lana reported.

It said an initial investigation found an explosive device had been placed inside the school, apparently targeting national army members in charge of security.

Gunmen on Wednesday attacked and set fire to a police station in Libya's eastern city of Benghazi to avenge the death of a colleague in an overnight incident, a security official said.

Policemen withdrew from the Alhadek police station which was then torched by the attackers, while gunfire reverberated around the complex, an Agence France Presse correspondent reported.

A bomb blast outside a hospital in the Libyan city of Benghazi could have been an accident, ministers said Tuesday, as the health ministry gave a "definitive" casualty toll of three dead and 14 wounded.

Ministers said they were now considering the possibility that the day-time blast on Monday outside Benghazi's al-Jala hospital was not a deliberate car bombing as previously thought.

Seeking to quell a growing scandal, President Barack Obama said Monday it would be "outrageous" if U.S. tax authorities targeted conservative groups fiercely opposed to his White House.

As he battled growing political woes, Obama also denied his White House had engaged in a cover-up to downplay the impact to his re-election campaign of the attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi last year, which killed four Americans.