The Syrian regime will collapse before the end of the year, Britain's ambassador to Damascus predicted in an interview published Tuesday.

Syria is "like a dam with fissures in it," Simon Collis told The Times newspaper. "The pressure is building up and one quite probable scenario is that, when it breaks, it will do so very quickly.

Syrian forces pounded rebel-held towns Tuesday and blasted a bridge used by refugees to escape to Lebanon, killing 35 people across the country, monitors said.

Twenty-three people were killed in the central province of Homs, seven in the southern province of Daraa, four in the northwestern province of Idlib and one in Damascus province, the Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on neighboring Syria on Tuesday to allow the immediate opening of humanitarian aid corridors.

"Humanitarian aid corridors must immediately be opened," Erdogan told a parliamentary meeting of his AKP party, urging the international community to put pressure on Damascus to allow the delivery of relief supplies to civilians.

Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday winds up a high-profile U.S. visit focused on Iran's perceived nuclear threat after warning that his country would not live in the "shadow of annihilation."

Netanyahu was to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and visit the U.S. Congress a day after keenly-watched talks with President Barack Obama against the backdrop of speculation over a possible Israeli strike on Iran.

Sweden has in secret been helping Saudi Arabia plan the construction of an arms factory to produce anti-tank missiles, public broadcaster Swedish Radio reported Tuesday.

The Swedish Defense Research Agency (FOI) has helped Saudi Arabia since 2007, though construction on "Project Simoom" has yet to begin, the radio said citing hundreds of classified documents and interviews with key players.

Syrian authorities said on Tuesday they had seized what appeared to be an "Israeli-like reconnaissance plane" in an arms factory in the Baba Amr area of Homs, the official SANA news agency reported.

"In Baba Amr, the competent authorities uncovered a factory for weapons used by terrorists to prepare explosives and hand-made rockets to be launched indiscriminately against houses," the agency said.

Syrian state media on Tuesday lashed out at Washington for slapping sanctions on a key official broadcasting network, saying the U.S. move constituted a "violation" of press freedom.

Washington on Monday slapped economic sanctions on Syrian General Organization of Radio and TV, saying the state media network of Damascus was aiding the regime in its brutal campaign to put down a popular uprising.

Al-Qaida's front group in Iraq claimed dozens of attacks in Baghdad this year, including a suicide bomb at a funeral and the assassination of the head of a women's prison, in a statement seen on Tuesday.

In a post on jihadist forum Honein, the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) listed 43 incidents it was responsible for between January 10 and February 10 in the Iraqi capital.

Al-Qaida gunmen have killed a soldier on the edge of Yemen's southwestern city of Bayda, the defense ministry said Tuesday, two days after a massive assault by the extremists killed scores of troops.

"The terrorist elements attacked security forces in Zaher checkpoint (late on Monday) killing the soldier Faisal Abas al-Sabri and wounding two others," the ministry's website26sep.net said, identifying the assailants as "al-Qaida gunmen."

Iran has sentenced a prominent human rights lawyer, Abdolfattah Soltani, to 18 years in jail for allegedly spreading anti-regime propaganda, several opposition websites reported on Tuesday.

"One of my husband's lawyers was told that my husband was sentenced to 18 years in jail in Borazjan (south Iran) and was also banned from practicing law for 20 years," Soltani's wife, Masoumeh Dehqan, told the reformist opposition website Rahebsabz.net.