Turkey scrambled a fighter jet on Friday after a Syrian helicopter shelled the Syrian town of Azmarin near their common border, an official told Agence France Presse.

"The fighter jet took off from Diyarbakir base in the southeast after (Syrian) regime forces sent a helicopter to shell Azmarin which was seized by rebel forces," the official said on condition of anonymity.

Supporters of President Mohammed Morsi clashed with opponents in Cairo's Tahrir Square on Friday in the worst violence over Egypt's new Islamist leader, a day after he crossed swords with the judiciary.

Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood movement and a coalition of secular-leaning groups held separate rallies on some of the thorniest issues facing the new democracy after last year's uprising which ousted president Hosni Mubarak.

Saudi King Abdullah held talks on Friday with international peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi on ways to end the bloodletting in Syria, the official SPA news agency reported.

The talks held in the Red Sea city of Jeddah centered on "how to stop all the violence, bloodshed... and violations of human rights," in Syria, the agency said.

A meeting next week of the Syrian National Council to admit new anti-regime factions into the main opposition bloc has been postponed until early November, an SNC official said on Friday.

The delay comes after the umbrella organization was flooded by requests from groups wanting to join it, SNC official Anas al-Abdi told Agence France Presse, adding that the meeting will now take place in early November instead of on October 17.

The U.N. refugee agency said Friday it was ready for the Syrian winter but the real problem was helping victims of the fighting within Syria itself.

"We are at a very great state of preparedness ... we can take this hugely seriously," said Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

An al-Qaida front group, the Islamic State of Iraq, claimed responsibility on Friday for last month's deadly assault on a prison in the northern city of Tikrit in which dozens of its members escaped.

In a statement posted on jihadist websites, the ISI gave details of how it provided "bombs, explosive belts and silenced weapons to the inmates and coordinate with them" as militants outside the prison killed guards and detonated a car bomb.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office denied a Friday report that he had offered to quit the occupied Golan Heights in exchange for peace with Syria in U.S.-mediated negotiations last year.

According to Yediot Aharonot daily which broke the story, talks fizzled out without any agreement as domestic protests that erupted in mid-March 2011 against Syrian President Bashar Assad's rule spiraled into civil war.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said Friday he has hastily scheduled a visit to NATO partner Turkey in a bid to ease rising tensions with Syria.

Westerwelle, who is on a trip to China, said in a statement he would hold talks Saturday with his Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu in Istanbul on "the situation in Syria and on the Turkish-Syrian border".

The Syrian plane intercepted by Turkey on a flight from Moscow was carrying Russian radar parts for Syrian missile defense systems but not weapons, a Russian newspaper report said Friday.

The plane was loaded with 12 boxes containing parts for radars used in the Syrian army's missile defence systems, Kommersant quoted sources in the arms export industry as saying, denying accusations by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that the cargo included ammunition.

A key proposal by Tunisia's ruling Islamist party to outlaw blasphemy in the new constitution, which stoked fears of creeping Islamization, is to be dropped from the final text, Assembly speaker Mustapha Ben Jaafar told Agence France Presse.

The agreement to drop the clause follows negotiations between the three parties in the ruling coalition and must still be approved by the committees drafting the constitution, which Jaafar said would be debated by parliament next month.