Syrian security forces killed a Saudi-Turkish citizen during a crackdown on an anti-regime protest in northwest Syria Tuesday, local Syrian opposition sources said.

The dead man, Mohammed Munir Dolar, was traveling in his vehicle in Kafr Yahmul, a town of Idlib province close to Turkey, when he was shot by security forces, who opened fire on protesters at around 1100 GMT, the sources told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.

Iran's parliament on Tuesday passed a bill for a free trade agreement with Syria in a show of support for President Bashar al-Assad's regime beset by protests and international pressure.

The bill provides for free trade between Iran and Syria within the next five years, according to Iranian state television.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Tuesday UNESCO's admission of Palestine was a key first recognition that he hoped others will follow, as the Palestinian flag was raised at the agency's offices.

"This admission is a first recognition of Palestine," Abbas said at the flag-raising ceremony in Paris.

Russia on Tuesday said Western accusations that it was blocking U.N. action condemning the Syrian regime's crackdown on the opposition were "immoral" because the West was refusing to put pressure on armed rebel groups.

"There are those who refuse to put pressure on the armed, extremist part of the opposition and are at the same time accusing us of blocking the U.N. Security Council's work. I would call this position immoral," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in televised comments.

Tunisia's opposition veteran Moncef Marzouki on Tuesday was sworn in as the country's first elected president since the north African nation's revolution sparked the Arab Spring.

"I will be the guarantor of the national interests, the state of laws and institutions," Marzouki said with his hand on the Koran as he took his oath before the constituent assembly that elected him president on Monday.

Army defectors on Tuesday killed seven members of Syria's security forces in retaliation for an attack that cost the lives of 11 civilians, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, as the Local Coordination Committees said Syrian forces shot dead 33 civilians across the country on Tuesday.

The LCC, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said security forces shot dead 20 people in the northwestern province of Idlib, seven in the central province of Hama, four in the central region of Homs and two in the southern province of Daraa.

An explosion ripped through a gas pipeline near the town of Rastan in Syria's flashpoint Homs province, the official news agency SANA reported Tuesday, blaming the overnight incident on "terrorists."

"An armed terrorist group in Homs bombed the gas pipeline near Rastan which caused explosions and fires in the pipeline at the point of bombing," the English-language report said, adding that "no human casualties were reported."

Palestinian police shot at a group of Israelis illegally visiting a West Bank religious site, injuring one, Palestinian security officials said Tuesday.

The police opened fire after shouting warnings at the small group of Israeli worshippers who had entered Joseph's Tomb near the northern West Bank city of Nablus overnight, said the officials.

Jewish settlers attacked an army base overnight on rumors troops were to destroy a settlement outpost, hours after another group broke into a military zone on the Jordan border, officials said.

In a statement on Tuesday, the military said a group of around 50 people had attacked the Ephraim base near Qalqilya in the northern West Bank.

Iran has indicted 15 people on charges of spying for the United States and Israel, Tehran's chief prosecutor said Tuesday, according to the Fars news agency.

"An indictment has been issued by the prosecutor's office against these 15 people," Jafari Dolatabi was quoted as saying.