Chinese state media on Saturday accused the U.S. and Europe of "harboring hegemonistic ambitions" in Syria, after Western and Arab nations ratcheted up pressure on Syrian President Bashar Assad at a meeting in Tunisia.

In a commentary Beijing's official Xinhua news agency said that "most of the Arab countries have begun to realize that the United States and Europe are hiding a dagger behind a smile".

Regime forces killed 41 civilians in Syria on Saturday, while 16 soldiers died in explosions and clashes with rebels, a monitoring group said.

Among the civilians, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 19 were killed in the flashpoint city of Homs, as a rebel stronghold there is shelled for the 22nd straight day.

Longtime Yemeni vice president Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi took the oath of office as president on Saturday ahead of formal handover of power by veteran strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Hadi pledged to "preserve the country's unity, independence and territorial integrity" in a swearing-in ceremony in parliament broadcast live by state television.

Iraq will not invite the Syrian government or opposition to an Arab summit to be held in Baghdad in late March, Iraq's foreign minister said in an interview broadcast on Friday.

"Syria is not invited and we will not send an invitation to it" to attend the summit, Hoshyar Zebari said in an interview with Iraqiya television.

A Palestinian wounded by Israeli army gunfire on the outskirts of Jerusalem died in hospital on Friday night after a day of clashes in and around the holy city, medics said.

Ramallah hospital emergency room staff said that Tareq Arumi, 23, was hit in a clash with troops during the afternoon in protests in the West Bank neighborhood of al-Ram, adjacent to Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.

The sole candidate in Yemen's presidential election on Tuesday, Vice President Abdrabuh Mansour Hadi, received 99.8 percent of the valid votes cast, the country's electoral commission announced on Friday.

According to the final results, 6,635,192 voters from an eligible electorate of 10,243,364 cast their ballots -- a turnout of 66 percent -- the commission said.

Saudi Arabia's delegation on Friday walked out of the "Friends of Syria" international meeting held in Tunisia to protest what it called "the meeting's inefficiency."

“Focusing on humanitarian aid is not enough and the only solution is a consensual or forced transition of power,” head of the delegation, Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said.

Arab and Western nations in Tunisia for the first "Friends of Syria" meeting called Friday for an immediate end to violence in the country and for new sanctions on the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

In a final declaration, the group called for the regime to immediately end all violence to allow for humanitarian aid to be brought in.

Bashar al-Assad is not ready to resign and claims to feel strong support despite 11 months of deadly protests, a top Russian lawmaker who met the Syrian president in Damascus this week said Friday.

"I met Assad and did not get the impression that this is a person who is ready to leave power tomorrow," Alexei Pushkov, the head of the international affairs committee of the State Duma lower house, told reporters.

An international conference on the crisis in Syria, which is being held in Tunisia on Friday, will reconvene in Turkey in three weeks, the opposition Syrian National Council said.

"The next meeting of the 'Friends of Syria' will be in three weeks in Istanbul," the SNC said in a brief statement.