A top Syrian army defector will announce later on Saturday the creation of a high military council that will oversee military operations against the embattled regime of Bashar Assad, his media advisor told Agence France Presse.

General Mostafa Ahmad al-Sheikh, the most senior commander to defect from the Syrian army, will make the announcement in Turkey, where he sought refuge earlier this month, Fahad Almasri said in a telephone interview.

Not so long ago, she was the darling of the international press, described as a "rose in the desert" and "a ray of light in a country full of shadow zones."

But today, Syria's First Lady is being likened to a modern-day Marie-Antoinette, drawing criticism for staying mum on a crisis that has left more than 5,000 people dead in her country.

A suicide attack on Shiite pilgrims on the outskirts of the main southern Iraqi city of Basra killed at least 50 people on Saturday, at the conclusion of Arbaeen commemorations, officials said.

Riyadh Abdulamir, head of the health department in Basra province, said 50 people were killed and 100 wounded in the 9:00 am (0600 GMT) attack just west of Basra city.

The U.S. government is concerned that Israel is preparing to take military action against Iran, and has stepped up contingency planning to safeguard U.S. facilities in the region, The Wall Street Journal reported late Friday.

The newspaper said President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and other top officials have delivered a series of private messages to Israeli leaders, warning about the dire consequences of a strike.

U.S. President Barack Obama spoke by telephone Friday with Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan about the situation in Syria and Iran's nuclear program, the White House said.

"They agreed that the U.S. and Turkey should continue to support the legitimate demands for democracy for the Syrian people and condemned the brutal action of the Assad regime," it said in a statement.

The United States believes Iran is supplying munitions to aid Syria's bloody protest crackdown in an initiative spearheaded by Tehran's revolutionary guard supremo, senior U.S. officials told Agence France Presse Friday.

Qasem Soleimani, head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps elite Quds force, was in the Syrian capital this month, one official said, in what Washington sees as the most concrete sign yet that Iranian aid to Syria includes military hardware.

The United States said Friday it has raised concerns with Russia and Cyprus over a Russian ship suspected of carrying munitions to Syria.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said "we have raised our concerns about this, both with Russia and with Cyprus, which was the last port of call for the ship."

Russia's departing ambassador to NATO warned the West on Friday against any foreign intervention in Syria, saying that the Arab Spring was already bringing Islamic fundamentalists to power.

"I believe that any foreign influence, pressure on a country such as Syria will inevitably lead to a catastrophe," Dmitry Rogozin, who was named vice prime minister in charge of the defense industry last month, told reporters.

Firefights between police and southern separatists in Yemen on Friday killed five and wounded 23, as protesters nationwide denounced a plan granting the president immunity from prosecution, medics and police said.

"Three protesters were killed and 18 others were wounded," a medical official in the main southern port of Aden said of the southern separatists.

Tunisia's ousted president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali plans to take a complaint about the seizure of his property to a United Nations committee, his lawyer said Friday.

In a statement, Akram Azoury condemned "the illegal actions of the Tunisian authorities who have confiscated all the fixed and moveable assets of president Ben Ali, including his personal house," under a decree signed by then interim president Fouad Mebazaa last March 14.