A wave of attacks blamed on al-Qaida killed at least 39 people on Thursday, in what Iraq's parliament speaker said was an attempt to derail an Arab League summit planned for the end of March.

Security officials and medical sources said more than 250 people were wounded in the attacks, which hit six different provinces, and came just days after a suicide blast near a Baghdad police academy.

Campaigning began in Iran on Thursday for parliamentary elections to take place on March 2, with officials and state media calling for a big turnout to counter the "enemies' threats" against the regime.

It will be the Islamic republic's first national poll since the controversial 2009 re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Britain summoned the Syrian ambassador on Wednesday to lodge a protest over the deaths of two Western journalists and demand the repatriation of their bodies, the Foreign Office said.

U.S.-born war correspondent Marie Colvin, who worked for Britain's Sunday Times newspaper, and French photojournalist Remi Ochlik were killed on Wednesday by shell fire in the rebel Syrian city of Homs.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in telephone talks on Wednesday that they reject foreign intervention in the Syria crisis, the Kremlin said.

"The sides spoke out in favor of the quickest resolution of the crisis by the Syrian people themselves through exclusively peaceful means and without foreign intervention," the Kremlin said in a statement.

Iraqi security forces on Wednesday arrested the head of Ansar al-Sunna, a Sunni insurgent group said to be linked to Al-Qaeda, the counter-terrorism chief for Anbar province said.

"Iraqi forces today arrested the leader of Ansar al-Sunna, Walid Khaled Ali, as he tried to illegally infiltrate into Iraqi territory from Syria," Brigadier General Khaled al-Dulaimi told Agence France Presse.

Egypt on Wednesday wraps up two-stage elections for the upper house of parliament, which caps a landmark legislative poll that saw Islamists propelled to the center stage of politics.

Many polling stations were empty in the final day of voting for members of the Shura Council, in sharp contrast to the long queues and active campaigning that marked the People's Assembly vote.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas arrived in Cairo on Wednesday for talks with Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal on the formation of a national unity government, the official MENA agency reported.

The long-time rivals have been struggling to implement the terms of a reconciliation deal signed in Cairo in May, which calls for the formation of an interim government of independents to pave the way for presidential and legislative elections within a year.

The European Union is set to slap fresh sanctions on Syria, including a ban on Syrian-run cargo flights into the 27-nation bloc, EU diplomats said Wednesday.

"There will be more sanctions announced Monday" when EU foreign ministers meet in Brussels, one source said.

Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that dialogue on Syria was "futile", the official SPA news agency reported on Wednesday.

Russia should have "coordinated with the Arabs... before using the veto" to block a resolution on Syria in the U.N. Security Council, King Abdullah was quoted as saying.

France on Wednesday demanded access to the victims of an attack in Syria that killed a U.S. war correspondent and French photojournalist, and summoned Syria's envoy to Paris.

Syria has meanwhile denied that it was aware that the journalists had entered the country.