Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned on Sunday that Kofi Annan represented the last chance for avoiding a civil war in Syria and offered the U.N.-Arab League envoy Moscow's full support.

Medvedev's stark message to Moscow's traditional ally came only hours after U.S. President Barack Obama announced plans to send "non-lethal" aid to the Syrian rebels and new waves of violence swept the battle-scarred country.

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev's Middle East envoy was in Algiers on Sunday for consultations on the deadly year-old crisis in Syria, a Russian diplomat said.

Mikhail Bogdanov, who arrived in the Algerian capital on Saturday, was holding talks with Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci, the APS news agency reported.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, will attend this week's Arab summit in Baghdad, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's office said.

"President al-Bashir told President Talabani that he will head his country's delegation to attend the next Arab summit in Baghdad this week," the presidency's website said after a phone call between the two leaders.

U.S. President Barack Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed Sunday on the need to send "non-lethal" aid to Syrian rebels, including communications equipment, a U.S. official said.

The two leaders agreed that a "Friends of Syria" group meeting on April 1 should seek to provide such aid and also medical supplies, as they met in South Korea on the eve of a nuclear security summit, said U.S. deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes.

Iraq's fugitive vice president on Sunday called for an urgent neutral inquiry into the death of his bodyguard, who was allegedly tortured while in custody.

Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, a Sunni the authorities have accused of running death squads, said his lawyers had been restricted access to the investigation against him and that the "situation in Iraq has become intolerable."

The Arab League, which is holding its annual summit in Iraq this week, will not call for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to resign, the group's secretary general said in comments published on Sunday.

Nabil al-Arabi told pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat Assad's response to proposals by international envoy Kofi Annan to end the bloodshed in Syria was "insufficient," and said he planned to submit a report on the crisis to summit leaders.

Nineteen people were killed in northwestern Algeria early Sunday when the bus they were riding plunged into a ravine, officials said.

Another 30 people were injured in the accident, which occurred near the city of Tiaret at around 2:00 am, public safety spokesman Farouk Achour said.

Suspected al-Qaida gunmen have killed an army officer and wounded two soldiers in an ambush in southern Yemen, a military official said Sunday.

The ambush, which took place on Saturday, targeted an army convoy east of the city of Huta, in the province of Lahij, the official told Agence France Presse .

Human Rights Watch said on Sunday that regime forces in Syria have resorted to using civilians as human shields to protect themselves from attacks by rebel fighters.

Citing witnesses and YouTube videos, the watchdog accused the army and Shabiha pro-regime militia of forcing people to march in front of them as they advanced on opposition-controlled towns in northwestern Idlib province.

Jordan has arrested 10 Syrians who claimed they were army defectors after they left a designated area in the northern city of Mafraq, a security official said.

"They were arrested last week and currently under interrogation," he told Agence France Presse.