Israel is to resume transferring millions of dollars in customs duties to the Palestinian Authority, public radio said Wednesday, but the prime minister's office said no decision had yet been taken.

Public radio reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's so-called Forum of Eight senior ministers had voted in favor of resuming the transfers, nearly a month after it froze them over Palestine's admission to UNESCO.

The U.N. Human Rights Council will hold a special session on the situation in Syria on Friday following a request by the European Union, a diplomatic source said.

"There will be a special session of the Council on the human rights situation in Syria on Friday," the European diplomat told Agence France Presse, adding that 28 countries had signed the call for the extraordinary session, the third this year.

Egypt's powerful Muslim Brotherhood on Wednesday claimed the lead in phase one of the country's first parliamentary elections since veteran president Hosni Mubarak's fall.

The movement's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) said initial results showed its coalition ahead, followed by parties belonging to hardline Islamist Salafi movements, then a coalition of secular movements in third.

Kuwaiti Defense Minister Sheikh Jaber Mubarak al-Sabah is expected to be named the new prime minister on Wednesday before parliament is likely to be dissolved, a lawmaker said.

"Sheikh Jaber is expected to be named by the leadership to be the next prime minister and lead what is likely to be a transitional government to oversee the election," opposition Islamist MP Falah al-Sawwagh told Agence France Presse.

Turkey on Wednesday slapped economic sanctions on the Syrian regime, freezing assets of Syrians involved in the government's crackdown on protesters, suspending ties with Syria's Central Bank and banning all military sales.

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told a news conference that Syrian President Bashar Assad has wrongly ignored calls from the international community to stop its bloody crackdown on protesters.

The United States and Iraq are embarking on a new phase in their relationship despite the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from the country next month, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said in Baghdad Wednesday.

"Our troops... are leaving Iraq and we are embarking on a new path together, a new phase in this relationship... between two sovereign nations," Biden said at the opening of a meeting of the U.S.-Iraq Higher Coordinating Committee.

Seven more people died in fresh violence across Syria on Tuesday, including a civilian killed by security forces after three of their own were gunned down by suspected mutinous soldiers, activists said.

Syrian troops killed four civilians, including a child, as they hunted for militants and arrested 29 high school students in a raid in the southern province of Daraa, cradle of the anti-regime dissent, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The Saudi foreign ministry on Tuesday urged its citizens to leave Syria and not to travel to the Arab nation that has been hit by months of deadly anti-regime protests.

"Due to the security situation, Saudi Arabia urges its citizens to leave Syria and not travel there," the ministry said in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency.

Hundreds of Palestinian civil servants called Tuesday for the labor minister to be fired after he made disparaging remarks about government workers.

Ahmed Majdalani has been under fire after remarks he made about government workers, calling them "brothers of whores," were accidentally broadcast live on Palestinian local radio on Thursday.

Morocco's King Mohammed VI on Tuesday named the head of the Islamist party that won last week's election as prime minister to lead talks on the formation of a coalition government, the palace said.

Abdelilah Benkirane, head of the moderate Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD), was summoned to the palace after results showed his party won the biggest block of votes in Friday's ballot.