Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday branded the massacre of 150 people in a central Syrian village as "attempted genocide" and said the regime was doomed.

"There is nothing more to be said about Syria," he said, speaking of the bloodshed in the village of Treimsa in Hama province, which activists said was bombarded by government forces.

A French staff member of the International Committee of the Red Cross who was kidnapped in Yemen in April has been released in good health, the ICRC said Saturday.

Benjamin Malbrancke was abducted by gunmen on April 21 while on his way to the airport in the port city of Hudaida in Yemen's north. The two drivers with him were also captured at the time but freed shortly after.

Nawaf Fares, who this week defected as Syria's ambassador to Iraq, on Saturday accused President Bashar Assad of allowing al-Qaida to use Syria as a springboard for attacks in his former host country.

Fares, the latest high-level official to abandon Assad, in an interview on Al-Jazeera television also accused Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of taking a stance toward Syria that was "contradictory" to the truth.

Israel was still holding five foreign women activists on Saturday who were arrested in the West Bank after a demonstration a day earlier, a police spokeswoman said.

"Five European activists arrested Friday during a demonstration in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) remain in detention," Luba Samri told Agence France Presse.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Saturday reaffirmed Washington's "strong" support for Egypt's democratic transition, after talks with newly-elected President Mohammed Morsi.

U.N. observers in Syria visited on Saturday the central village of Treimsa, where more than 150 people were killed this week, according to a spokeswoman for the U.N. mission and an activist on the ground.

An activist in Hama province calling himself Abu Ghazi said the observers had met residents of the village and "inspected places that were bombed and where there were traces of blood."

Iraq's prime minister on Saturday condemned the killing of more than 150 people in a central Syrian town two days ago, describing the deaths as an "ugly massacre."

"The ugly massacre that took place in Treimsa town, in Hama province, provokes feelings of concern and condemnation," Nouri al-Maliki said in a statement published on his official website.

Syrian troops and pro-regime militias stormed and torched a southern town on Saturday, reports said, as U.N. observers visited a central village where a mass killing has provoked harsh global condemnation.

Hundreds of soldiers backed by helicopter gunships attacked Khirbet Ghazaleh in the province of Daraa -- the cradle of a 16-month uprising -- amid heavy gunfire, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Gunmen killed nine people, including seven members of the security forces, on Saturday in separate attacks on checkpoints in north Iraq, security and medical officials said.

In the deadliest shooting, five members of the security forces died when gunmen opened fire on a checkpoint in the Turkmen town of Rashidiyah, northeast of the main northern city of Mosul, an army captain said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Libyan authorities should take immediate steps to assume custody of thousands of detainees still held by militias, a rights watchdog said on Saturday, after a deadline for a handover passed.

"Despite months of cajoling the militias, the transitional authorities missed the deadline and failed to gain control over approximately 5,000 people still held arbitrarily by armed groups, some subjected to severe torture," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.