A senior U.S. official said on Sunday that the world is looking for peaceful ways to end "killing and brutality" in Syria, accusing Iran of supporting the murder of Syrian people.

"While the goal of all us is to find ways to stop the killing and brutality, we are looking for peaceful ways to do so," Jeffrey Feltman, assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs, told reporters in Amman.

Syria faced new sanctions after flouting Sunday an Arab League deadline to accept observers to monitor the unrest sweeping the country, which the U.N. says has killed more than 4,000 people.

A senior Qatari official said Damascus had asked for "new clarifications and further amendments to be made to the protocol which was proposed" to cover the deployment of the observer mission.

Five Yemeni soldiers were killed in an attack by al-Qaida suspects on their post near the southern restive city of Zinjibar in Abyan province, a military official told Agence France Presse on Sunday.

"Al-Qaida militants attacked a military barracks using rocket propelled grenades and machineguns east of Zinjibar... killing five soldiers" late on Saturday, the official said.

Seven young Israeli women, six of them minors, have been arrested on suspicion of participating in the destruction of hundreds of Palestinian olive trees, Israeli police said on Sunday.

The women are also accused of taking part in demonstrations against the dismantling of illegal settlement outposts in the West Bank, during which Israeli army equipment was damaged, a police spokeswoman told Agence France Presse.

Syria is punishing its own people by suspending a free trade agreement with Turkey in retaliation for Turkish sanctions against the Damascus regime, the Turkish economy minister said Sunday.

By cutting off bilateral trade, "the Syrian government punishes its own people, industrialists, exporters and entrepreneurs," Economy Minister Zafer Caglayan said in a statement carried by the state-run Anatolia news agency.

Three children and their father were among at least 30 civilians killed on Sunday as Syrian security forces pressed on with an almost nine-month clampdown on dissent, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

In the flashpoint city of Homs, "a man and three children aged 11, 14 and 16 were killed at dawn in the al-Waer district when the Shabiha (pro-regime militia) opened fire on their cars," said the Observatory.

Islamists trounced their liberal rivals in the opening phase of Egypt's first election since the fall of Hosni Mubarak, figures showed on Sunday, with one in four voters choosing hardline Salafists.

Islamist parties won 65 percent of all votes cast for parties in the first round of parliamentary polls, while the secular liberals who played a key part in the January-February uprising managed just 13.4 percent.

Weeks before the U.S. pullout, Iraq's prime minister confidently predicts that his country will achieve stability and remain independent of its giant neighbor Iran even without an American troop presence.

Nouri al-Maliki also warned on Saturday of civil war in Iran's ally Syria if Bashar Assad falls — a view that puts him closer to Tehran's position and at odds with Washington. The foreign policy pronouncement indicates that Iraq is emerging from the shadows of U.S. influence in a way unforeseen when U.S.-led forces invaded eight years ago to topple Saddam Hussein.

Bahrain's interior ministry said Sunday a blast occurred inside a minibus parked near the British Embassy, but there were no immediate reports of serious damage or injuries.

A brief statement posted by the ministry said the explosion occurred in a public parking area near the British diplomatic compound in the capital Manama. Investigators sealed off the area.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak expressed deep concern on Saturday after early results in Egypt's post-revolution election showed Islamists sweeping to victory.

"The process of Islamization in Arab countries is very worrying," Barak told Israel's private Channel Two television.