The Iraqi branch of al-Qaida carried out two recent bombings in Damascus and was likely behind suicide bombings Friday that killed at least 28 people in the Syrian city of Aleppo, McClatchy Newspapers reported.

Citing unnamed U.S. officials, the newspaper chain said the incidents appeared to verify Syrian President Bashar Assad's charges of Al-Qaida involvement in the uprising against his rule.

Bahraini forces have injured three people after firing tear gas at dozens of demonstrators ahead of the anniversary of Shiite-led protests crushed in March, an opposition activist said on Saturday.

"Three people were severely wounded by tear gas canisters" fired at protesters on Friday, said the source who requested anonymity.

Hamas "will never recognize Israel," its Gaza prime minister said Saturday in a speech in Iran that is likely to complicate Palestinian efforts to form a unity government in the teeth of opposition from the Jewish state.

"They want us to recognize the Israeli occupation and cease resistance but, as the representative of the Palestinan people and in the name of all the world's freedom seekers, I am announcing from Azadi Square in Tehran that we will never recognize Israel," Ismail Haniya said.

Saudi police exchanged fire with "masked gunmen" during a protest in the oil-rich east, killing one of them, state news agency SPA reported early on Saturday, in the second such incident in 24 hours.

Activists contacted by AFP from Dubai said that Zuhair al-Said, 21, was killed as security forces dispersed a protest on Friday against the death of another Shiite demonstrator the previous day.

Activists plan a day of civil disobedience in Egypt on Saturday to mark the first anniversary since they toppled Hosni Mubarak but left an increasingly unpopular but defiant military in charge.

The call for strikes in universities and workplaces comes after a series of protests pressuring the military to transfer power immediately to civilians, rather than wait for planned presidential elections later this year.

Egypt's ruling military said on the eve of the first anniversary of the revolt that toppled Hosni Mubarak that it will not bow to threats or plots against the state, official television reported.

"We will never yield to threats, and we will never give in to pressure," the much-criticized Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) said in a statement broadcast by the channel.

The Arab League is likely to appoint a special envoy to Syria at a meeting this weekend, a Western diplomat in London said on Friday.

Also on Friday, the opposition Syrian National Council, an umbrella body grouping parties in revolt against Bashar al-Assad's regime, said it expects to be recognized within days by several Arab states.

Armed Bedouins kidnapped three South Korean tourists and their Egyptian guide in the Sinai Peninsula on Friday in the latest in a spate of abductions in the region, a security official said.

The trio -- three women -- were returning from the historic monastery of St Catherine to the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh when they were seized and taken off in a pickup, the official said on condition of anonymity.

Thousands rallied in the Yemeni capital on Friday to back a single-candidate presidential election planned for later this month that has sparked protests in the south, an Agence France Presse correspondent reported.

The demonstrators, who gathered in Sanaa's Change Square -- epicenter of a year of protests against veteran President Ali Abdullah Saleh -- chanted slogans in favor of the poll in which Vice President Abdrabuh Mansour Hadi will be the sole candidate.

It was meant to be the historic trial of a dictator brought to justice by his long-suffering people, but the case against Egypt's ex-president Hosni Mubarak has verged on the farcical as prosecutors and lawyers struggle to rise to the occasion.

From the start of the trial on August 3, lawyers representing Mubarak's victims drained the proceedings of gravitas as they jostled for the chance to hold forth on live television.