The Moroccan navy has picked up 242 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa who were trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Spain in flimsy boats, the official MAP press agency reported late Friday.

Libya's Red Crescent said Friday its rescue workers had recovered the bodies of 62 migrants a day after one of the deadliest shipwrecks this year in the Mediterranean.

The picture went viral on social media networks: two dust-covered Syrian girls, trapped in rubble, grab their baby sister from her shirt as she dangles from a bombed-out building.

The trial of Saudi dissident cleric Sheikh Salman al-Awda is to resume Sunday after an almost six-month postponement, Amnesty International said, expressing fear he will be sentenced to death.

Tunisia has less than two months to organise snap elections following the death of president Beji Caid Essebsi, amid uncertainty over who could step forward to run the North African country.

Damascus said Friday it would reject any agreement between Turkey and the US to establish a "security zone" in northern Syria as tantamount to a violation of the country's sovereignty.

More than 400,000 people have been displaced in northwestern Syria over the past three months, the UN said Friday, as the government presses an intensified bombardment of the rebel-held region.

Sunni-ruled Bahrain seeks to rebrand itself as an open and tolerant state after long being criticised by international rights groups for its crackdown on Shiite protesters, experts said.

A Libyan militia has arrested a number of al-Qaida-linked jihadist leaders in a raid near the capital Tripoli, the group said.

Air strikes by the regime and its Russian ally killed 10 civilians including three children in northwest Syria Thursday, a monitor said.
