Egyptian police made 39 arrests after clashes between Islamists and opponents that saw both sides use firearms in central Cairo, leaving more than 100 people injured, officials said on Saturday.

A judicial source said prosecutors have begun questioning the suspects, as the health ministry said Friday's violence had injured 105 people.

Syria's main opposition National Coalition said on Saturday that Russia was "out of step" with history for backing President Bashar Assad's regime and was isolating itself on the international scene.

"Russia is keeping up a foreign policy that only looks at things from a narrow military perspective, and which does not understand the profound historic changes caused by the Arab Spring," the Coalition said.

At least 69 people, many of them rebels, have been killed in a four-day battle pitting Syrian insurgents against government forces in Jdaidet al-Fadl near Damascus, a monitoring group said on Saturday.

"Regime troops are trying to seize total control of the town of Jdaidet al-Fadl" southwest of Damascus, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Suspected al-Qaida militants shot dead a Yemeni intelligence officer overnight in Mukalla, capital of the southeastern Hadramawt province, a security official told Agence France Presse on Saturday.

"al-Qaida gunmen on a motorbike opened fire on the officer Ibrahim Bameshel as we was on his way back home, killing him immediately," the official said, adding that the assailants had fled.

Ten policemen were injured in a clash with demonstrators in the Syrian refugee camp of Zaatari in northern Jordan, a security official said on Saturday.

The source, declining to be named, said two of the policemen were in serious condition after the clash on Friday night.

The United States is set to boost its support for Syria's rebels at a meeting of the opposition's main foreign backers Saturday and could for the first time agree to supply non-lethal military gear.

But Washington is expected to stop short of agreeing to rebel demands for arms as the 11-nation core group of the "Friends of Syria" hold talks in Istanbul with key figures in the opposition battling President Bashar Assad.

Iraqis voted on Saturday in the country's first polls since U.S. troops departed, a key test of its stability in the face of a spike in attacks that has claimed more than 100 lives.

But the credibility of the provincial elections has come into question, with attacks on candidates leaving 14 dead and a third of Iraq's provinces -- all of them mainly Sunni Arab or Kurdish -- not even voting.

Global hopes that democracy could replace dictatorships in Arab Spring nations risk being crushed by repressive regimes, the United States warned Friday in its annual human rights report.

"The hope of the early days of the Arab Awakening has run up against the harsh realities of incomplete and contested transitions," the State Department said in its assessment of the global situation of human rights in 2012.

The United States unveiled plans Friday to sell $10 billion worth of advanced missiles and aircraft to Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia in a bid to counter the threat posed by Iran.

It was highly unusual for the Pentagon to announce an arms deal covering three countries and the move seemed to be designed to send a warning to Iran that Washington's partners in the region were beefing up their military power.

U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi on Friday urged the Security Council to come together on Syria, venting frustration with all sides while denying rumors he plans to resign.

Brahimi told the 15-member council that Syrian President Bashar Assad is "not in a mood for dialogue" and that the only hope for stemming the violence is if the council agrees unanimously on a plan of action, diplomats told Agence France Presse.