Syrian security forces on Friday shot dead at least 34 people, including a child, as pro-democracy protests swept the country, with demonstrators pressing on with calls for more freedom in defiance of a fierce crackdown, activists said.

The child was among 12 people killed in the central city of Homs while 15 died in the town of Maaret al-Naaman, near the western city of Idlib, the activists said.

Embattled Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh told thousands of supporters on Friday that he wants an early presidential election to end a political crisis after months of deadly anti-regime protests.

"We call for an early presidential election in a democratic way, in order to avoid bloodshed," Saleh said, a day after officials from his ruling party and the opposition said a Gulf-brokered deal that would see him leave office in 30 days was to be inked on Sunday.

A keynote speech by President Barack Obama on U.S. Middle East policy offered nothing new but simply reaffirmed Washington's staunch support for Israel, Syria's official SANA news agency said on Friday.

"The U.S. president's speech on the Middle East had nothing new as far as his country's policies on the peace process, the situation in Iraq or security or regional stability are concerned," the news agency said.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas called an "urgent" leadership meeting Thursday to examine U.S. President Barack Obama's Middle East policy speech, an aide said.

But his tentative partners in the Islamist Hamas movement immediately called on Obama to take "concrete steps" not merely issue "slogans" in support of Palestinian independence and an end to Israeli occupation.

Israel should not be asked to withdraw to the borders that existed before the 1967 Six Day War, Israel's prime minister said Thursday, after U.S. President Barack Obama's Middle East policy speech.

In a statement issued after the speech, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office called on Washington to confirm it would adhere to "assurances" given to Israel by former president George W. Bush in 2004.

Syrian troops on Thursday began withdrawing from Tall Kalakh, deploying on the outskirts of the western town that had been besieged following pro-democracy protests, a witness told Agence France Presse.

"Some 20,000 soldiers that had been in the town began withdrawing this morning," said the witness who did not want to be identified. "We counted 80 tanks and armored personnel carriers and buses."

U.S. President Barack Obama declared Thursday that the borders of Israel and a Palestinian state must be based on 1967 lines, likely setting up a new clash with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In a long-awaited survey of the "Arab spring" of revolts, Obama compared "shouts of human dignity" across the region to America's birth pangs and civil rights struggles, and said the uprisings showed repression would not work.

Authorities in Tunis on Thursday denied reports that members of embattled Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's family, including his wife and daughter, had fled and arrived in Tunisia.

"These reports are totally false," said a government source, stressing that "no member of the Gadhafi family has crossed the Tunisian border" with Libya, where Gadhafi loyalists are fighting to put down a rebellion.

Taliban fighters attacked an Afghan road construction company before dawn Thursday, triggering gun battles that killed 35 people and wounded another 20 in the worst single attack in months.

The attack, which sparked a shootout lasting five hours, happened in the eastern province of Paktia, which borders Pakistan, at around 2:00am (2130 GMT Wednesday), a provincial spokesman said.

A Gulf-sponsored accord to end a bloody political dispute between President Ali Abdullah Saleh and Yemen's opposition will be signed on Sunday, opposition and ruling party officials said.

"The signing will take place on Sunday in Sanaa," Sultan al-Barakani, the assistant secretary general of the ruling General People's Congress, said of an accord sponsored by the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).