The U.N. Security Council will add the al-Qaida-linked Syrian militants Al-Nusra Front to its sanctions blacklist next week, diplomats said Friday.

Following a move by France and Britain, the Islamist group, which has become one of the most feared fighting forces in Syria's two-year-old conflict, will be subject to a global asset freeze from Tuesday, the diplomats told Agence France Presse.

EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton said Friday she is worried about mounting tensions in East Jerusalem and the West Bank after conflicting messages from Israel on settlement activity.

"The High Representative is concerned by developments over the past week in East Jerusalem and the West Bank which have increased tensions on the ground and risk undermining current efforts to re-launch peace talks," her office in Brussels said in a statement.

Polisario Front leader Mohamed Abdelaziz said on Friday Morocco's "policy of fear and terror" in the Western Sahara had failed and that victory was in sight.

Abdelaziz, the self-styled Sahrawi president, was speaking on the 40th anniversary of the rebel group's formation.

Egypt's security forces on Friday detained the founder of one of the key youth movements behind the 2011 uprising that toppled the former regime upon his arrival at Cairo Airport from Vienna, a security official told Agence France Presse.

Ahmed Maher of the April 6 movement was arrested at the airport "based on the orders of the general security department at the interior ministry," the official said.

Thousands of partisans of Bahrain's opposition demonstrated near Manama on Friday to protest against the alleged torture of jailed regime opponents, witnesses said.

Gathered around the Shiite village of Daih, men and women waved Bahrain's national flag and held up signs that read: "Manama, capital of torture," the witnesses said.

Two Finnish hostages who spent more than four months in captivity in Yemen returned home on Friday, little more than a day after being released.

Atte and Leila Kaleva, a married couple, arrived at Helsinki airport on a special plane chartered by the Finnish government, evading journalists waiting for them.

Russia is completing its delivery of surface-to-air missiles to Syria, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Friday, a move the United States has called destabilizing.

"Russia is not planning to sell -- Russia has sold and signed contracts a long time ago, and is completing supplies of the equipment -- which is anti-aircraft systems, according to the already signed contracts," Lavrov told reporters in Warsaw.

Egypt's security forces on Friday detained the founder of one of the key youth movements behind the 2011 uprising that toppled the former regime upon his arrival at Cairo Airport from Vienna, a security official told Agence France Presse.

Ahmed Maher of the April 6 movement was arrested at the airport "based on the orders of the general security department at the interior ministry," the official said.

British Prime Minister David Cameron and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday discussed joint options for ending the crisis in Syria amid a new diplomatic push to resolve the two-year conflict.

Cameron's rare call on Putin at his summer vacation residence in the Black Sea resort of Sochi came three days after top U.S. and Russian diplomats agreed to make a joint effort in search of a solution.

Hundreds of Tunisians, including police, human rights activists and political party representatives, protested on Friday against "terrorism" after the government said two wanted jihadist groups had ties with al-Qaida.

Several hundred protesters gathered outside the national assembly shouting "Tunisia is free, terrorism out!" and waving placards with slogans including: "We support the security forces and the army in the war against terrorism."