The U.N. Committee Against Torture said on Friday it had received reports of massive human rights violations in Syria, including the detention and mutilation of children.

"The committee has reviewed numerous, consistent and substantiated reports and information about widespread rights violations in the country," the head of the panel Claudio Grossman said in a statement.

Saudi Arabia's ruling al-Saud dynasty should give up power, a hardline senior Iranian cleric said Friday, warning that the fate of Egypt's toppled president Hosni Mubarak awaits Saudi King Abdullah.

"You should give up power and leave it to the people. They will establish a people's government," Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati said in the weekly Muslim prayers at Tehran University.

Egyptian state television says the nation's ruling military has asked a Mubarak-era prime minister to head the next government.

Kamal el-Ganzouri, 78, served as prime minister in the 1990s under President Hosni Mubarak, toppled in a popular uprising in February. The Friday television announcement followed a meeting between el-Ganzouri and military ruler Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi the night before.

Masked gunmen on Friday blew up a gas pipeline which supplies Egyptian gas to Israel, the official MENA news agency reported, in the eighth such attack this year.

The saboteurs planted explosives under the pipeline, around 60 kilometers (40 miles) west of the town of el-Arish in the north of the Sinai peninsula, before fleeing, witnesses said.

The imam leading tens of thousands of worshippers in prayer at Cairo's Tahrir Square on Friday called on the ruling military to hand power to a national salvation government.

Sheikh Mazhar Shahin said protesters would remain in the square -- the symbolic heart of rallies that toppled President Hosni Mubarak -- until their demands were met.

Fierce clashes broke out between rival security forces in the Yemeni capital Friday, two days after President Ali Abdullah Saleh inked a power transfer deal which sponsors had hoped would end the violence.

Dissident troops from the First Armored Brigade led by General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar exchanged mortar and machinegun fire in the early hours with forces of the central security services commanded by Saleh's nephew Yehya, residents said.

Thousands of supporters of Egypt's ruling military council turned up for a rally in Cairo's Abassiya neighborhood on Friday, just miles from a mass protest in Tahrir Square calling for the end of military rule.

"The military, the police and the people are one," the protesters chanted according to the MENA news agency.

Syrian activists called for demonstrators to flood the streets nationwide after the main weekly Muslim prayers in support of dissident army officers.

"The free army protects us," said a message on the Facebook page of the Syrian Revolution 2011, one of the key motors behind more than eight months of protests seeking to unseat the government of President Bashar Assad.

Russia said Friday ahead of the expiry of a new Arab League ultimatum on Syria that it opposed pressure and sanctions against its traditional Arab ally and wanted to see a renewal of political dialogue.

"At this stage, what we need is not resolutions, sanctions or pressure, but inter-Syrian dialogue," foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich told a televised press briefing.

A new Arab League ultimatum which gives Syria until later Friday to agree to accept observers or face sanctions represents a last chance for the regime in Damascus, Turkey's foreign minister said.

"It is a last chance, a new chance for Syria," Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters in Istanbul in the final hours before the 11:00 GMT deadline.