As Muslims the world over geared up for Eid, the celebrations marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan, Syrians faced another daily cycle of bloodshed on Saturday.

Local Coordination Committees said that the number of people killed by the Syrian regime forces rose to 160 in Damascus and its suburbs.

President Mohammed Morsi plans to attend a summit in Iran this month, state media reported on Saturday, on the first such visit since Egypt severed ties with Tehran more than three decades ago.

The official MENA news agency quoted a source in the presidency as saying Morsi will attend the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Tehran on August 30-31 at which Egypt will transfer the bloc's rotating leadership to Iran.

A former Syrian minister who defected last year said Saturday that it was "well-known" that Vice President Faruq al-Shara had tried to leave and was under house arrest.

The comments by former deputy oil minister Abdo Hussameddin came after the regime in Damascus denied opposition claims that Shara, the most senior Sunni Muslim official in President Bashar Assad's Alawite-led regime, had defected.

The conflict in Syria is a struggle between the United States and Iran whose outcome will decide whether the Middle East follows the path of an Iran-inspired Islamic movement or U.S. influence, a top Iranian official said on Saturday.

"Today, we are in the final with the United States in Syria," Mohsen Rezaie, secretary of the Expediency Council that advises supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was quoted as saying by the Mehr news agency.

An Iranian opposition organization said on Saturday it is ready to move another group of its Iraq-based members to a new site near Baghdad after a delay which has dragged on for several months.

"As a gesture of goodwill, the residents of Ashraf will commence the 6th convoy of 400 residents from Camp Ashraf to Camp Liberty on August 23," Maryam Rajavi, president of the National Council of Resistance of Iran which includes the People's Mujahedeen Organization of Iran, said in a statement.

The departing U.N. observer mission chief on Saturday accused both Syrian army and rebel forces of failing to protect civilians, as activists report dozens of people killed daily.

"Both parties have obligations under international humanitarian law to make sure that civilians are protected," General Babacar Gaye, head of the U.N. Supervision Mission in Syria, told reporters in Damascus.

Suspected Al-Qaida militants killed 14 soldiers in a rocket attack and suicide bombing on Saturday that targeted intelligence headquarters in the main southern city of Aden, a security official said.

"The death toll has increased to 14 soldiers," the official told AFP, adding that 11 were killed by gunfire and the other three by a "car bomb driven by suicide bomber into the courtyard of the intelligence building."

Militants wounded three Egyptian policemen in the Sinai Peninsula on Saturday in an ambush of their vehicle with a rocket propelled grenade, a security official said.

The militants attacked the policemen near the north Sinai town of Sheikh Zuwayid, roughly 15 kilometers (9 miles) west of the Gaza border, as the policemen were returning from an operation, the official said.

The European Union on Saturday pledged to support Lakhdar Brahimi as the new international mediator on the Syria conflict in his "immensely challenging task".

"Mr. Brahimi is an experienced diplomat with a deep understanding of the region," EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said in a statement, adding: "The EU will provide him with its full support in this immensely challenging task."

Syrian Vice President Farouq al-Shaara has not defected, state television said on Saturday, citing a statement from his office after media reports that he had fled.

"Mr. Sharaa has never thought about leaving the country or going anywhere," said the television. Sharaa himself was not seen.