The U.N. General Assembly voted 137 to 12 on Thursday to approve a resolution calling for an immediate halt to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's violent crackdown on dissent.

China, Russia and Iran were among the nations that opposed the text.

The head of the Russian parliament's foreign affairs committee is to visit Syria next week for talks with its leadership amid concern over the growing bloodshed, he announced on Thursday.

Alexei Pushkov, the head of the international affairs committee of the State Duma lower house, told the Interfax news agency that his visit was aimed at reporting back to parliament about the situation inside the country.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon called on Thursday for all sides to end the deadly violence in Syria and urged the international community to find a common response to the 11-month-old crisis.

"What is important at this time is that first the Syrian authorities must stop killing their own people," Ban told journalists on a visit to Vienna.

Security forces on Thursday arrested blogger Razan Ghazzawi, icon of the 11-month uprising in Syria, along with rights activist Mazen Darwish and 12 others, opposition figures said.

Human rights lawyer Anwar Bunni said Ghazzawi was arrested in an early afternoon raid on the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression, which is located in central Damascus and is headed by Darwish.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held talks in Nicosia Thursday with Cypriot leaders on energy cooperation and economic ties, during a landmark visit to the east Mediterranean island.

"I came here to develop our bilateral ties, economic ties, and our ties in the field of energy," he said after talks at the presidential palace in Nicosia with President Demetris Christofias.

Vandals believed to be Jewish extremists set light to a car in a village in the northern West Bank on Thursday, Israeli police said.

The incident took place in Nabi Elyas village, just outside the northern town of Qalqilya, with the words "price tag" scrawled near the burnt out car.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Thursday accused Iran of "exaggerating" progress on its disputed nuclear program a day after Tehran unveiled what it said was its first domestically-produced 20-percent enriched uranium.

"The Iranians are continuing to progress but what they presented yesterday was a show. There are many things which have been presented in an exaggerated manner, partly to dissuade the world from going after them," he told public radio by telephone from Tokyo.

Syrian armor moved on the main hubs of an 11-month uprising on Thursday killing at least 22 people, monitors said, a day after President Bashar Assad set a vote for a new constitution.

Opposition groups rejected the newly proposed constitution and urged voters to boycott a referendum set for this month, and to step up efforts to oust Assad.

Seventeen Yemeni tribesmen were killed Thursday in clashes that followed the assassination of a local al-Qaida leader by his half-brother in his stronghold southeast of Sanaa, tribal chiefs said.

The clashes erupted after Tarek al-Dahab was shot dead by his half-brother Hizam in the town of al-Masaneh, a family fiefdom in Bayda province, several tribal chiefs said, confirming that the killer and his brother were among the 17 killed in the gunfights.

At least eight Palestinian children were killed on Thursday when an Israeli truck hit a Palestinian school bus on a road in the West Bank, Israeli police said.

"There are between eight and 10 Palestinian children dead, aged between 10 and 16, and more than 30 injured who were taken to various hospitals in Ramallah and Mt Scopus," police spokeswoman Luba Samri told Agence France Presse.