Iraq is taking measures to secure its border with Syria against weapons smuggling and the unauthorized movement of people, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's office said in a statement on Saturday.

Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime has been carrying out a bloody crackdown on an uprising in which human rights groups say more than 6,000 people have been killed since March 2011.

Algeria proposed Saturday to boost cooperation with North African neighbors against terror and organized crime as the five-nation Arab Maghreb Union (UMA) held its first high-level conference since 1996.

Algeria sought "true and effective Maghreb cooperation in the fields of terrorism, organized crime, illegal arms and drug trafficking and clandestine immigration," Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci told counterparts in Rabat.

A faction of Yemen's separatist Southern Movement on Saturday called for a day of "civil disobedience" to disrupt next week's presidential election.

The Higher Council of the Peaceful Movement for the Liberation of the South, in a statement, called on its supporters to "take every possible peaceful action" against Tuesday's election to prevent it going ahead.

Swiss authorities have intercepted mobile phone surveillance equipment destined for Syria and Iran, an official told Swiss Television.

Juergen Boehler from the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) told the German channel's "10 vor 10" program European suppliers had tried to send the goods via Switzerland but customs officials seized them at the border.

A rocket fired at Israel on Saturday by Palestinian militants instead hit a house in the Gaza Strip, but there were no casualties, witnesses said.

It apparently exploded prematurely, damaging the house, the witnesses said, without being able to provide further details.

Egypt was set to further widen a row with the United States by announcing on Saturday that it would go ahead with a trial of foreign democracy activists, including 19 Americans, on February 26.

A court set the date for the start of the trial of 43 suspects -- who also include Serbs, Norwegians, Germans, Egyptians, Palestinians and Jordanians -- in a crackdown on NGOs accused of receiving illegal foreign aid, state media announced.

Embattled Syrian president Bashar Assad's forces unleashed their heaviest pounding yet of the central protest city of Homs, monitors said, as thousands rallied for his ouster.

The protesters emerged from mosques after the main weekly Muslim prayers on Friday, including in Damascus, following a call by Internet-based activists for a rally for a "new phase of popular resistance."

Iranian warships entered the Mediterranean after crossing the Suez Canal on Saturday to show Tehran's "might" to regional states, the navy commander said, at a time of simmering tensions with Israel.

According to Iran’s Mehr news agency the two warships have docked in the Syrian port of Tartus.

U.S. military and intelligence drones are reportedly monitoring the Syrian military's deadly crackdown on opposition forces and protestors.

U.S. defense officials told NBC News' Jim Miklaszewski that "a good number" of unmanned drones are monitoring the activities of the Syrian regime.

Bahrain announced the deportation of four foreign activists for "taking part in illegal demonstrations," bringing to 12 the number expelled over the past week.

The four were deported for "lying on immigration forms" as their "visas were issued for the purposes of tourism but all were participating in illegal demonstrations," the official BNA news agency reported late on Friday.