Al-Qaida combatants are fighting alongside armed Syrian opposition militants, Russian foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich was quoted Thursday as saying by the Itar-Tass news agency.

"It is not a secret that our proposals are being rejected by the West or blocked by Syria's radical opposition, not to mention armed units fighting against governmental forces that include al-Qaida fighters and other extremists," he said.

Russia on Thursday confirmed it had agreed to discuss its approach to the Syria crisis with critical Gulf foreign ministers, but denied that a firm date had been set for next week.

"We have received the agreement in principle from member states of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf to organize such a meeting," foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich told ITAR-TASS.

The U.N. Security Council on Thursday called on Syria to allow "immediate" humanitarian access to protest cities in a unanimously agreed statement.

Russia and China significantly signed up to the statement which was approved after Syria refused to let U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos into the country. Syria has said the date proposed by Amos was not suitable.

American and other foreign democracy activists on trial in Egypt flew out of Cairo airport on Thursday, airport officials said, a day after the judiciary lifted a travel ban on them.

Their departure is expected to ease tensions with Washington, which had urged Egypt's military rulers to resolve the case which American officials had suggested could imperil U.S. aid to its key Middle Eastern ally.

Speaking in a monotone, Abu Mahmoud recalls the four years he spent in Syrian jails, describing torture and appalling living conditions worthy of George Orwell's dystopian vision in his novel "1984."

Freed three months ago in an amnesty Damascus announced in an effort to douse the uprising that has now gripped Syria for nearly a year, the bearded 27-year-old, like many Syrians, refuses to be photographed or give his real name for fear of reprisal.

Syrian forces overran the Baba Amr district of powderkeg Homs on Thursday after rebels retreated, potentially marking a turning point in President Bashar al-Assad's bid to crush an increasingly armed uprising.

As rebel fighters pulled back, the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) warned of a "massacre" in the rebel neighborhood by Syrian forces, while aid agencies said they would urgently try to get there to deliver aid and evacuate the wounded.

A Jordanian military tribunal on Thursday freed on bail an outspoken former member of parliament who is on trial for urging a revolt in the kingdom, a court official said on Thursday.

"The state security court today released Ahmed Abbadi from jail on bail of 10,000 dinars (around $14,000)," the official told Agence France Presse without providing further details.

An American teacher was shot dead on Thursday by one of his students in a murder-suicide at a private Christian school in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, officials said.

The student, 18-year-old Piyar Suroor, killed himself after firing multiple gunshots at Jeremiah Small, a teacher at the Medes School in Kurdistan's second biggest-city of Sulaimaniyah.

Qatar's Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani said Thursday the time had come to "study all options" in seeking a way out of the Syrian crisis.

"We have to study all options to save the Syrian people," Al-Thani said after meeting European Parliament head Martin Schulz.

Two Chinese workers, kidnapped for ransom in Cairo on Thursday in a sign of growing insecurity a year after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, were released after several hours, an embassy official said.

"They are free," embassy spokesperson Lu Jingchun told Agence France Presse, without providing details of how the pair's release had been secured.