U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan's visit to China to discuss the crisis in Syria, initially scheduled for this weekend, will take place on Tuesday and Wednesday, the Chinese foreign ministry said.

Annan's spokesman had said on Friday he would visit Beijing and Moscow at the weekend for talks in two countries criticized for resisting global efforts to condemn Syrian President Bashar Assad.

A young Palestinian was shot and wounded on Saturday in a clash with Jewish settlers in the West Bank, Palestinian security sources said.

The trouble erupted when a group of around 40 Israeli settlers entered the Burqin area in the north of the occupied territory and clashed with residents, they said.

Human Rights Watch on Friday called for Iraq to launch a criminal investigation into allegations that a bodyguard of the country's fugitive Sunni vice president who died in custody was tortured.

Amir Sarbut Zaidan al-Batawi died earlier this month in prison, and Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi released photographs which his office said showed the 33-year-old was tortured, though security forces and judicial authorities insist he died of kidney failure.

The army resumed shelling the central Syrian protest cities of Homs and Hama on Saturday, monitors reported, as international envoy Kofi Annan headed to Russia in the latest push for peace.

Mortar shells rained down on the flashpoint Khaldiyeh district of Homs continuously for two hours in the morning, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, adding that it had no information about casualties.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano moved Friday to allow Syrians in the United States to stay beyond their visas and avoid the risk of returning to their violence-torn country.

Napolitano said in a statement that, "in light of deteriorating conditions in Syria," the Department of Homeland Security will be designating Syria temporary protected status (TPS) for Syrians currently in the United States.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave the green light Friday to resume $1.3 billion in annual military aid to Egypt despite fears it is slipping in its avowed transition to democracy.

The move marked the denouement of a crisis in the 30-year-old U.S.-Egyptian alliance that erupted over a crackdown in December on pro-democracy groups by Egypt's interim military rulers.

Nearly 1,000 Syrians demonstrated Friday in the Jordanian capital against President Bashar al-Assad's regime, demanding "freedom" in the neighboring country.

"We will not bow. God damn you Bashar," read a banner carried by the demonstrators, outside the Syrian embassy in western Amman.

At least 22 civilians, three regime troops and a rebel were killed on Friday in Syria as government forces bombed towns and clashed with rebels in several areas of Syria and tens of thousands of people took part in "Damascus, here we come" demonstrations, monitors and activists said.

Security forces killed 11 people in Homs, four in Daraa, three in Idlib, a person in Latakia, one in Deir al-Zour, one in Aleppo and another in al-Raqq, the Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said.

The United Nations Friday launched an appeal for 84 million dollars (63 million euros) to help Syrian refugees who have fled abroad because of the current fighting.

Turkey has taken in some 17,000 refugees, Lebanon 16,000, Jordan about 8,500, with Iraq welcoming an unknown number, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement.

Libya has restored full diplomatic relations with Iraq and plans to send an ambassador to Baghdad more than eight years after cutting off ties, Iraq's deputy foreign minister said Friday.

"There was a delegation that came here, and they said that this decision is under discussion at the foreign ministry in Libya and this step will be taken soon, and they took that step yesterday," Labid Abbawi told Agence France Presse.