The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas ruling Gaza said on Saturday it would free more than 150 prisoners "as a gift" for the holy month of Ramadan.

The Hamas government "was releasing 159 inmates ... on the occasion of the holy month of Ramadan and as a gift" from its head, Ismail Haniya, a statement quoted interior ministry official Islam Shahwan as saying.

Turkish officials Saturday blamed sabotage for a fire on a pipeline carrying Iraqi crude to a Mediterranean port from where it is transported to world markets, Anatolia news agency reported.

The fire on the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline erupted late Friday between the villages of Sogutlu and Senkoy in southeastern Turkey, the governor of Mardin province, Mardin Turhan Ayvaz said, blaming it on "sabotage.

At least 20 people were killed across Syria on Saturday, as the clock started ticking on a 30-day deadline for violence to abate sufficiently for a troubled U.N. observer mission to remain in place.

At least 12 civilians were among the dead as clashes rocked both of the country's largest cities, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Iraq's government said on Friday it was unable to provide help for Syrian refugees looking to escape their country's ongoing strife because of the poor security situation within Iraq.

"Our borders are desert areas, and we cannot provide aid for refugees and because of the security situation," government spokesman Ali Dabbagh said in an interview on Iraqiya state TV, to explain why Iraq would not be able to support Syrian refugees.

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Western powers on Friday not to take unilateral action against the Syrian government outside the U.N. Security Council.

The Kremlin said Putin delivered the comments at a closed meeting of Russia's powerful Security Council that groups all the top ministers and decides strategy on the most sensitive foreign and domestic affairs.

The U.N. Security Council on Friday unanimously voted to let the U.N. observer mission in Syria stay for a "final" 30 days, but remained bitterly divided over the conflict.

Russia had threatened to veto a Syria resolution for the second time in two days, but its ambassador Vitaly Churkin finally backed a resolution proposed by Britain.

Switzerland on Friday lifted an arms embargo against the United Arab Emirates after the two sides agreed to investigate how Swiss hand grenades sold to the UAE wound up in Syria, the government said.

The temporary embargo was imposed on July 4 after Swiss media published photographs of hand grenades manufactured by the Swiss group Ruag found at an unspecified location in Syria.

Black smoke billowed from ruined homes and three bloodied corpses lay on Friday in a square in Midan, the Damascus district retaken by regime forces early in the day after fierce firefights with rebels.

The Syrian military escorted journalists in two armored personnel carriers into Midan in the south of the Syrian capital after saying it had "cleaned" the district of "terrorists" -- a term the regime uses to describe rebel fighters.

An Israeli protester who set himself alight during a social justice demonstration last weekend died of his injuries on Friday, media reported.

Moshe Silman, 57, set himself ablaze at a demonstration in the city of Tel Aviv on Saturday night and suffered extensive burns. He died at Tel Hashomer hospital near Tel Aviv, media said.

Syrian forces launched an all-out assault on opposition strongholds in Damascus Friday amid unprecedented fierce fighting in the city of Aleppo, Syria’s second city, a day after rebels seized crossings on the Iraq and Turkey borders on the 16-month conflict's deadliest day so far.

Rebel fighters also clashed with troops in several neighbourhoods of Aleppo in what a human rights watchdog said was the fiercest fighting so far in Syria's second city.