Iran on Saturday inaugurated a plant for producing carbon fiber, which it is banned from importing by international sanctions targeting dual-use materials, the official IRNA news agency reported.

"Today we are witnessing the fulfillment of a strategic project of the Ministry of Defense," Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi said as he inaugurated the production facility, IRNA reported.

Syrian security forces killed two anti-regime demonstrators on Saturday morning and wounded another 15 in Damascus and in the northern province of Idlib, rights activists said.

In the capital's western quarter of Kafar Susseh, one demonstrator was killed and 10 hurt when club-wielding security forces attacked a group of people leaving prayers at the Rifai mosque, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Seven Yemeni soldiers were killed and six others wounded on Saturday in clashes with suspected al-Qaida forces in the southern province of Abyan, a military officer said.

The fighting took place near Dofes, a village south of the provincial capital of Zinjibar that has been occupied by extremist elements since the end of May, the source said.

A convoy of six armored cars that could be carrying high Libyan officials, even fugitive leader Moammar Gadhafi, crossed from Libya into Algeria on Friday, the official Egyptian news agency reported quoting a Libyan rebel source.

The report could not immediately be confirmed from Algerian or Libyan sources.

Eighteen people were killed and 26 wounded in a suicide bombing at the Cherchell military academy west of Algiers, the defense ministry said Saturday revising its own toll given hours earlier.

The ministry said 16 officers and two civilians were among the dead. Twenty wounded had been discharged but six people were still in hospital, one in critical condition.

The United States and Israel are monitoring Syria's suspected arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, fearing that terror groups could take advantage of the revolt against President Bashar Assad to obtain chemical agents and long-range missiles, The Wall Street Journal reported late Friday.

Citing unnamed officials from both countries, the newspaper said U.S. intelligence services believe Syria's nonconventional weapons programs include significant stockpiles of mustard gas, VX and Sarin gas and the missile and artillery systems to deliver them.

A U.N. humanitarian mission to Syria found an "urgent need" to protect civilians against excessive force and reported widespread intimidation, a U.N. spokesman said Friday.

The mission was the first allowed into Syria since President Bashar al-Assad launched his deadly crackdown on opposition protests in March.

Russia on Friday proposed a U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria that would omit Western calls to sanction President Bashar al-Assad for his deadly crackdown on opposition protests, diplomats said.

Signaling an intensifying Security Council battle on how to act over Syria, a European-U.S. resolution calling for sanctions and a Russia draft which only calls on Assad to implement reforms were officially put forward Friday for a potential vote.

Forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi killed more than 150 prisoners in a "mass murder" as they fled the rebel takeover of Tripoli, a rebel military chief told Agence France Presse on Friday.

"There were instances of revenge in the last few hours before the fall of the regime," said Abdul Nagib Mlegta, head of operations for the takeover of the capital.

The African Union declined Friday to recognize Libya's rebel authority and instead called for the formation of an all-inclusive transitional government.

With rebels still battling diehard forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi, South African President Jacob Zuma said at the end of an AU Peace and Security Council meeting in Addis Ababa that the rebels were not yet legitimate.