Western nations led by the United States are seeking to persuade Russia to host President Bashar Assad in exile as a way out of the escalating Syria crisis, a Russian newspaper report said Wednesday.

But Moscow so far has not been receptive to the idea, even though Kremlin sources put Assad's chances of political survival at "10 percent,” the Kommersant daily said.

Hundreds of Palestinian activists demonstrated in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Tuesday to protest against the violent dispersal of two similar rallies at the weekend.

Watched by only a handful of local police, the activists waved Palestinian flags in a rare expression of public discontent with the West Bank's ruling Palestinian Authority headed by President Mahmoud Abbas.

Syrian troops pounded several rebel-held districts in the central city of Homs on Tuesday, as the death toll mounted across the country, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

In total, at least 48 people were killed on Tuesday, bringing to more than 120 the death toll over two days, the Britain-based watchdog reported.

The UAE is keen on strengthening relations with Egypt, its foreign minister said on Tuesday, welcoming newly elected President Mohamed Morsi's pledge not to "export" his country's revolution.

Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan's statement came days after Egypt's foreign ministry summoned the UAE ambassador over comments made by Dubai police chief General Dahi Khalfan offering "condolences" on Morsi's victory.

Algerian authorities have identified a suicide attacker who killed one person and wounded three at a paramilitary police headquarters in the town of Ouargla, al-Watan newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Investigators have "identified the DNA of the attacker," local commander Colonel Tahar Othmani was quoted as saying on al-Watan's website, without naming the person.

Moammar Gadhafi’s last premier, Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi, who was controversially extradited from Tunisia to Libya to face justice, said on Tuesday that he was innocent.

"I am not guilty, not guilty, not guilty," Mahmoudi told journalists during a visit to his prison organized by the authorities in an apparent bid to quash rumors that he had been tortured on his arrival in Libya.

Russia will not attend a Friends of Syria meeting in Paris on Friday which seeks to coordinate Western and Arab efforts to stop the violence in the country, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said.

"Russia was invited. They made it known that they did not want to participate, which is not a surprise," he told reporters.

Italy on Tuesday dispatched a field hospital to Jordan to help treats tens of thousands of Syrian refugees who have fled violence in their country.

The hospital will be set up in the northern city of Mafraq near the border "to provide health care to displaced persons in Jordan from Syria and to local communities that host them," an Italian embassy statement said.

Russia on Tuesday accused the West of seeking to "distort" the agreement reached last weekend in Geneva on a plan for a political transition to end the escalating conflict in Syria.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov hailed the accord based on proposals by envoy Kofi Annan as an "important step" but said that Western capitals had already read more into the final statement than what was written on paper.

Syrian troops pounded several rebel-held districts in the central city of Homs on Tuesday, as the death toll mounted across the country, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

In total, 38 people were killed on Tuesday, bringing to more than 110 the death toll over two days, the Britain-based watchdog reported.