Bahraini authorities released Shiite rights activist Zainab al-Khawaja from prison Wednesday after she served a two-month jail term for destroying government property, her lawyer told Agence France Presse.

"Zainab is free and she is home with her family," Mohammed al-Jishi said adding that she was supposed to be released yesterday, when her two month sentence came to an end.

The Syrian army carried out a major offensive on Qudsaya, west of Damascus, and a neighboring locality on Wednesday and was deploying troops heavily there, a monitoring group and AFP journalists said.

"The army is carrying out a major military operation on the outskirts of Qudsaya and Hameh, shelling the area," said Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman, with a large number of arrests taking place.

Human Rights Watch on Wednesday accused Gaza's ruling Hamas movement of "extensive" rights violations, including torture, warrantless and arbitrary arrests, and unfair trials.

In a report entitled "Abusive System: Criminal Justice in Gaza," the New York-based watchdog alleged that Hamas security services also failed to inform relatives of the whereabouts of detainees, and had arrested and abused lawyers.

Saudi Arabia will curb the powers of its notorious religious police charged with ensuring compliance with Islamic morality but often accused of abuses, a newspaper report said on Wednesday.

"The new system will set a mechanism for the field work of the committee's men which hands over some of their specializations to other state bodies, such as arrests and interrogations," Al-Hayat daily quoted religious police chief Sheikh Abdullatiff Abdel Aziz al-Sheikh as saying.

A protest and scuffles with police occurred in central Tehran on Wednesday in the first sign of public unrest over Iran's plunging currency, which this week has lost more than half of its value.

Hundreds of police in anti-riot gear stormed the capital's currency exchange district of Ferdowsi, arresting illegal money changers and ordering licensed bureaux and other shops closed, witnesses told Agence France Presse.

The Kuwaiti cabinet on Wednesday approved a draft decree calling for the ruler of the oil-rich Gulf state to dissolve the 2009 parliament, the information minister said.

Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah Al-Sabah said the decision was taken at an extraordinary meeting of the cabinet, the official KUNA news agency reported.

A Yemeni alliance of groups that want independence for the south of the country said in a statement Wednesday that they will boycott next month's national dialogue proposed by the government in Sanaa.

The Southern Movement "refuses to take part in the national dialogue conference" which will be held in mid-November, the umbrella group said in a statement concluding its three-day conference held in Aden, the capital of the formerly independent South Yemen.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is likely to call elections in mid-February 2013, more than six months early, Israeli media and ministers said on Wednesday.

In recent weeks, speculation has been rife that Netanyahu, who continues to ride high in the polls, might bring forward elections scheduled for next October, rather than try to pass a controversial new budget before the vote.

Car bombs tore Wednesday through Syria's second city Aleppo, leaving dozens dead, as violence across the country killed 147 people, monitors said.

Two blasts went off in quick succession near a military officers' club around Aleppo's Saadallah al-Jabiri Square, ripping off a hotel's facade and flattening a two-story cafe, an Agence France Presse correspondent reported.

The U.S. military and intelligence agencies are compiling detailed dossiers on those believed to have attacked the U.S. consulate in Libya ahead of possible retaliation, the New York Times reported.

Citing U.S. officials, the Times reported late Tuesday that the top-secret Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) was collecting information on the deadly attack last month that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.