The United States believes Iran is supplying munitions to aid Syria's bloody protest crackdown in an initiative spearheaded by Tehran's revolutionary guard supremo, senior U.S. officials told Agence France Presse Friday.

Qasem Soleimani, head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps elite Quds force, was in the Syrian capital this month, one official said, in what Washington sees as the most concrete sign yet that Iranian aid to Syria includes military hardware.

The United States said Friday it has raised concerns with Russia and Cyprus over a Russian ship suspected of carrying munitions to Syria.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said "we have raised our concerns about this, both with Russia and with Cyprus, which was the last port of call for the ship."

Russia's departing ambassador to NATO warned the West on Friday against any foreign intervention in Syria, saying that the Arab Spring was already bringing Islamic fundamentalists to power.

"I believe that any foreign influence, pressure on a country such as Syria will inevitably lead to a catastrophe," Dmitry Rogozin, who was named vice prime minister in charge of the defense industry last month, told reporters.

Firefights between police and southern separatists in Yemen on Friday killed five and wounded 23, as protesters nationwide denounced a plan granting the president immunity from prosecution, medics and police said.

"Three protesters were killed and 18 others were wounded," a medical official in the main southern port of Aden said of the southern separatists.

Tunisia's ousted president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali plans to take a complaint about the seizure of his property to a United Nations committee, his lawyer said Friday.

In a statement, Akram Azoury condemned "the illegal actions of the Tunisian authorities who have confiscated all the fixed and moveable assets of president Ben Ali, including his personal house," under a decree signed by then interim president Fouad Mebazaa last March 14.

Thousands demonstrated in support of the rebel Free Syrian Army on Friday, as activists said security forces shot dead 13 people in several regions and longtime Damascus ally Moscow kept up its opposition to calls for tougher action against the regime.

The Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said regime troops shot dead two people in the northern province of Aleppo, one in the central province of Hama, one in the eastern oil hub of Deir al-Zour, five in the central opposition bastion Homs, one in the southern province of Daraa and two in the Damascus suburb of al-Damir.

Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki will pardon more than 1,000 prisoners on Saturday's anniversary of the fall of the regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the justice ministry said.

Priority will be given to aged people and adolescents, it said Friday, adding that some other detainees will benefit from conditional release and reduced sentences.

France on Friday opened a murder probe into the killing of a French journalist in Syria, amid suspicions of regime collusion in the first death of a Western journalist since protests began 10 months ago.

Judicial sources said a murder enquiry had been opened into the killing on Wednesday of 43-year-old France 2 television reporter Gilles Jacquier during a government-organized trip to Homs, a flashpoint for anti-regime protests.

Human Rights Watch on Friday strongly criticized a decision by the Gulf state of Kuwait to bar stateless people from protesting, saying the order denies them their rights and should be revoked.

Kuwait's interior ministry has issued three statements this week warning stateless people, locally known as illegal residents or bidoons, not to demonstrate or they will be punished.

Bahraini police forces fired tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets to disperse a Shiite-led protest in the capital, wounding several people, activists said on Friday.

The Sunni-ruled kingdom's interior ministry said in a statement published by state news agency BNA that security forces "had to disperse" a group taking part in an "illegal demonstration" after they were given several warnings to end their rally.