Clashes in northern Iraq killed nine police on Friday, while a car bomb targeting worshipers near a Sunni mosque north of Baghdad left at least five dead, officials said.

The fighting between police and armed men in west Mosul, including mortar rounds fired at checkpoints, killed nine police and wounded seven, police and a doctor said.

The United States still hopes a conference aimed at creating a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East can take place soon, a high-level U.S. official said Friday, urging regional players to cooperate.

"I think it could be very soon, if the will exists among the regional parties to engage with each other and to respect each others' needs," said Thomas Countryman, U.S. assistant secretary of international security and nonproliferation.

When a landmine blew Syrian rebel Jamil Lala's foot off, he expected to be relegated to a non-combat role far behind the front lines and away from his comrades.

Instead he learned to walk on a prosthetic limb and headed to the front to be closer to his men.

Syrian troops Friday bombarded Sunni areas of the Mediterranean city of Banias, a monitoring group said, warning of a new "massacre," as Washington said for the first time it was looking at arming rebels.

The opposition National Coalition earlier denounced a "large-scale massacre" by troops and militiamen on Thursday in a Sunni village near Banias, a new front in Syria's war, citing witness reports of civilians being stabbed to death.

A majority of U.N. Security Council members support a trip to inspect Syrian refugee camps inside Jordan but Russia and China remain opposed to a visit, diplomats said Thursday.

Jordan this week warned that the growing exodus of Syrian refugees who had flooded over its border to escape civil war -- already over 500,000 -- was placing a "crushing weight" on the country.

Most Israelis are sceptical that the Arab League's modification of its plan to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will bear fruit, according to a poll published in a Tel Aviv newspaper on Friday.

Asked if they saw a revised Arab offer of full diplomatic ties in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from land occupied in 1967, with mutually agreed land swaps with the Palestinians, sparking new peace talks, 54.8 percent of respondents answered "no", the Israel Hayom freesheet said.

Hundreds of Salafist Islamists protested outside the Egyptian National Security Agency's headquarters in Cairo on Thursday, accusing the powerful security service of harassing them.

Some of the Islamists briefly tried to break past the gates of the headquarters, an Agence France Presse correspondent said, while others harassed journalists and tried to break an AFP cameraman's equipment.

The United States is taking a fresh look at whether to provide weapons to Syria's rebels after having rejected the idea previously, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Thursday.

At a news conference with his British counterpart Philip Hammond, Hagel was asked if the U.S. government was rethinking its opposition to arming the rebels and replied: "Yes."

U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon discussed deadlocked efforts to end the Syria conflict with the major powers on Thursday amid mounting signs that peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi is to quit.

Diplomats and U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky confirmed the meeting but declined to say whether Brahimi has already told the United Nations and Arab League that he would be leaving.

Twenty people have died and four people remain missing in Saudi Arabia after heavy downpours triggered flash floods in the desert kingdom for nearly a week, the civil defense authorities said on Thursday.

People have drowned in several areas of Saudi Arabia, according to a statement by the civil defense quoted by SPA state news agency.