Two powerful car bombs targeting security posts ripped through Syria's second city of Aleppo on Friday, killing at least 25 people and wounding 175 as the Free Syrian Army blamed the regime for the attacks.

State television said "armed terrorist groups" carried out the attacks, the first in Aleppo since the outbreak of an uprising against the regime of President Bashar Assad almost a year ago.

Security forces opened fire on a demonstration in Saudi Arabia's oil-rich east, fatally wounding one Shiite protester and wounding several others, activists and witnesses said on Friday.

"Munir al-Medani, 21, was wounded by a live bullet in his chest" one activist said requesting anonymity, referring to the incident which took place late Thursday in Qatif province in the kingdom's Eastern Region.

The international community cannot afford to watch the "massacre" taking place in Syria without acting, Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Thursday during a visit to Washington.

Davutoglu is urging an international conference to resolve violence that erupted when demonstrators began demanding last spring Syrian President Bashar Assad be removed from office.

Russia must confront "the reality" of the deadly crackdown in Syria, EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton said Thursday, after Moscow vetoed a U.N. resolution condemning the violence.

"My message to my Russian colleagues is they too need to recognize the reality of the situation on the ground" in Syria, said Ashton, who was making a two-day visit to Mexico.

Malaysian police Friday said they had detained a young Saudi journalist who fled his country after Twitter comments he made about the Prophet Mohammed triggered calls for his execution.

Hamza Kashgari was taken into custody after flying into Malaysia's main international airport on Thursday, police spokesman Ramli Yoosuf told Agence France Presse.

The United States issued a correction Thursday saying it has not yet obtained a document outlining the formal charges against U.S. citizens working for pro-democracy groups in Egypt.

"Yesterday, I implied that we had the document and that we needed to translate it and read it. It turns out that that was inaccurate," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters.

Egyptian Bedouin kidnapped two police officers and 17 conscripts in Sinai on Thursday after a tribesman was killed in a shoot-out with police, security officials said.

The officials said the Bedouin took the policemen at gunpoint after attacking their station near the border with Israel in the increasingly restive peninsula.

The major powers gave a cautious welcome on Thursday to proposals to send a joint Arab League-United Nations mission to monitor Syria's deadly crackdown on protests.

France said there had to be "guarantees" for the mission. The U.S. and German ambassadors to the United Nations said their countries were studying the idea raised by U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday.

Libya has ordered Syrian diplomats to leave the country within 72 hours, just days after the main Syrian opposition group took over Damascus's mission in Tripoli, the official news agency reported Thursday.

The Libyan foreign ministry has given "72 hours for the Syrian diplomats to leave the country," the official LANA news agency reported, quoting a ministry statement.

The Palestinian leadership on Thursday endorsed the latest agreement between the heads of Fatah and Hamas and called for preparations for elections to be speeded up.

Palestinian President and Fatah head Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal inked an accord in Doha on Monday placing Abbas at the head of an interim government to supervise the run-up to elections later this year.