Yemeni authorities announced on Friday the arrest of 21 suspected members of al-Qaida in connection with the murder of five people in Bayda province, including two electoral officials.

The five were killed when gunmen opened fire on their car in Bayda, southwest of the capital, on Tuesday.

Libyans celebrated on Friday the first anniversary of the uprising against Moammar Gadhafi with fireworks and slogans, even as their new leader vowed to prevent further instability.

Thousands gathered in Tahrir (Liberation) Square in Benghazi, the city which first rose against Gadhafi and his 42-year regime, after traditional Muslim prayers, waving Libya's new flag and proclaiming the revolution's "birthday."

Syria's President Bashar al-Assad said on Friday that reforms have to be synchronized with a return to peace in the unrest-swept country, state media reported.

Assad, in remarks to visiting Mauritanian Prime Minister Moulaye Ould Mohamed Laghdaf, said that reforms and a "return to peace" must be concurrent in Syria, according to the official SANA news agency.

The Syrian National Council, the largest opposition group in the strife-ridden country, will not be officially represented at a "friends of Syria" conference next week, host Tunisia said on Friday.

"There will certainly not be an official SNC representative" at the conference, Foreign Minister Rafik Abdesalem told reporters while recognizing that the topic had caused wide debate.

France and Britain pledged Friday to help the Syrian opposition in its struggle against Bashar al-Assad's regime but said conditions were not right for a foreign intervention as in Libya.

Meeting for a summit in Paris, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron expressed support for a conference to form an international coalition dubbed the Friends of Syria next week in Tunis.

Thousands of Palestinians in Gaza City held a rally on Friday in solidarity with an Islamic Jihad member, detained without trial by Israel, on the 62th day of a hunger strike.

"We stand by the heroic symbol of prisoners, brother Khader Adnan, in his unlimited hunger strike," head of the Hamas government in Gaza Ismail Haniya, just back from a tour of Gulf countries via Egypt, told reporters ahead of the event.

Fourteen protesters, including 12 women, serving a six-month prison sentence in Bahrain have been freed on bail ahead of a final decision on their sentence by the court of cassation, Amnesty International said.

The 12 women and two men were each given six-month sentences in October for taking part in an "illegal gathering," "incitement to hatred of the regime," "assaulting policewomen" and "participating in illegal marches," Amnesty said in a statement received by Agence France Presse on Friday.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad lashed out against foreign interference in the region following talks in Pakistan on Friday designed to help chart a political solution in Afghanistan.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai called for action rather than words after the three-way summit hosted by President Asif Ali Zardari, as Kabul seeks to enlist Islamabad's assistance in bringing the Taliban to the negotiating table.

Thousands of Syrians rallied Friday to demand President Bashar al-Assad's ouster, as the embattled leader's forces unleashed their heaviest pounding yet of Homs in a brutal bid to crush dissent and killed 39 people across the country, monitors said.

The 39 victims included 12 dissident soldiers who were summarily executed at the hands of regime troops in the southern province of Daraa, the cradle of the revolution, the Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said.

Amnesty International said the resolution passed by the U.N. General Assembly condemning the Syrian regime for its deadly crackdown on dissent sends "a clear and unequivocal message" that the violence must end.

In a strongly worded resolution adopted by a 137-12 vote on Thursday, U.N. member states demanded that President Bashar Assad's regime stop attacking civilian demonstrators and start pulling its troops back to barracks.