Security forces killed at least 33 people on Friday as protesters took to their streets in their thousands on Friday to call for regime change, activists and a rights watchdog said.

The Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said security forces killed seven people in the northwestern province of Idlib, seven in the Damascus neighborhood of al-Tadamon, six in the central province of Hama, five in the central province of Homs, four in the northern province of Aleppo, two in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, one in the Damascus suburb of al-Mleiha and one in the southern province of Daraa.

The head of the Arab League, which has played a key role in mediating the Syria crisis, arrived in China on Friday for discussions with top leaders, China's foreign ministry said.

Nabil al-Arabi arrived in the commercial hub of Shanghai and would travel to Beijing on Monday to meet Chinese officials, including Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, a spokesman said.

U.N. mediator Kofi Annan's plan for Syria is "on track", though progress in implementing the ceasefire is slow, his spokesman said Friday.

"The Annan plan is on track and a crisis that has been going on for over a year is not going to be resolved in a day or a week," Ahmed Fawzi, the U.N. and Arab League envoy's spokesman, told journalists in Geneva.

Pro-government gunmen fighting al-Qaida alongside the Yemeni army have killed 12 suspected militants as jihadists attacked the southern town of Loder, one of the fighters said on Friday.

"Two vehicles were destroyed and 12 fighters killed" late Thursday by the gunmen, he told Agence France Presse, adding the militants had attacked the southern entrance to the town in restive Abyan province.

Saudi Arabia has assured a high ranking Egyptian delegation visiting the kingdom following Riyadh's closure of its Cairo embassy over protests that relations remain "solid", the SPA state news agency said.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal also told the delegation that Riyadh does not rule out that "foreign elements" could have plotted to cause the tension between the two Arab heavyweights, SPA reported late on Thursday.

Egyptian activists have called for anti-military demonstrations across the country on Friday, days after bloody clashes near the defense ministry left at least nine people dead.

Several pro-democracy movements, including April 6, as well as the powerful Muslim Brotherhood said they would be joining the protests in Cairo and the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, amid a tense political run-up to the country's first post-uprising presidential election.

Iran on Friday held a parliamentary election run-off to decide 65 seats still outstanding in its 290-member legislature following a March 2 first round.

The vote, whose results are due out in the coming days, was seen as unlikely to change the political direction of the predominantly conservative chamber, though it could help lay the ground for 2013 presidential elections.

The head of the U.N. military observer mission in Syria, Major General Robert Mood, said on Thursday that it was the responsibility of the Syrian army to make the first move to halt the violence.

"If you have two individuals using on each other all their weapons, who is going to be the first one to move the finger? Who is going to be the first one to make the move?" Mood asked, during a visit to the battered central city of Homs.

Federalists in Libya's eastern Cyrenaica region called on Thursday for a boycott of next month's constituent assembly elections, rejecting the transition plan set out by the interim authorities.

The Council of Cyrenaica, which wants autonomy for the oil-rich east, issued a statement calling on "all Libyans... to boycott elections" unless the ruling National Transitional Council changes its plans.

Libyan authorities on Thursday granted immunity to former rebels who fought to oust Moammar Gadhafi’s regime and unveiled legislation that cracks down on the fallen strongman's supporters.

"There is no punishment for acts made necessary by the February 17 revolution," read the law published on the National Transitional Council's website.