Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak played down the diplomatic crisis with Ankara on Thursday, saying the current dispute over a deadly Israeli raid on a Turkish-led flotilla "will pass."

But he reiterated his government's line that Israel not apologize for the May 2010 operation which targeted a flotilla of ships trying to break Israel's naval blockade on Gaza, and cost the lives of nine Turkish nationals.

A special Bahraini court has released on bail 20 Shiite medics being tried for their role in a month-long pro-democracy protest, including many who had gone on hunger strike, state news agency BNA said.

The national safety court, set up under a three-month quasi-emergency law declared by king Hamad ahead of the mid-March crackdown on the protest led by the Shiite majority, said the verdict will be issued on September 29, BNA reported late Wednesday.

Moammar Gadhafi on Thursday slammed reports he had fled to neighboring Niger as "psychological warfare and lies" in an audio message aired by the Damascus-based Arrai television channel.

"They have nothing else to resort to apart from psychological warfare and lies. They last said Gadhafi had been seen in a convoy heading towards Niger," he said in the first message from the fugitive deposed Libyan strongman in several days.

Libya's new leaders were Wednesday urgently seeking Niger's help in preventing Moammar Gadhafi, his family or his troops from crossing the border, as the hunt for the fugitive strongman intensified.

Gadhafi’s sole remaining media mouthpiece, Mishan al-Juburi, the owner of Syria-based Arrai Oruba television, said the defeated leader was still in Libya, along with his son Seif al-Islam.

The Arab League said its secretary general, Nabil al-Arabi, will visit Syria on Saturday, three days later than originally planned amid a deadly crackdown on an anti-regime protests in the country.

"It was decided that the Arab League secretary general will visit Syria on Saturday during a telephone conversation between (Arabi), Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem and Syria's envoy at the League," the pan-Arab group's deputy leader, Ahmed Ben Helli, told reporters in Cairo.

France on Wednesday accused Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime of committing crimes against humanity and expressed hope that Russia would soon join sanctions against its old regional ally.

"The Syrian regime has committed crimes against humanity," French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said during talks with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.

The trial of Egyptian ex-president Hosni Mubarak reopened Wednesday, state TV said, with new witnesses set to be questioned over the deaths of hundreds of protesters in the revolt that ousted him.

The latest hearing is the fourth in the trial which opened on August 3 and, unlike the first two sessions, the process is being held behind closed doors and off-camera.

Iranian forces have killed the deputy commander of Iraq-based Kurdish rebel group PJAK, the Islamic republic's elite Revolutionary Guards said in a statement on Wednesday.

"Majid Kavian, deputy commander of the terrorist (Party of Free Life of Kurdistan) PJAK group, with the alias of Samakou Sarhaldan was killed on Saturday," September 3, the Guards said on its website Sepahnews.

Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is planning to embark on a tour of Arab Spring countries next week including Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, a government official said.

"The prime minister had already planned a visit to Egypt but negotiations and preparations are under way for this trip to include Tunisia and Libya as well," the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Agence France Presse on Wednesday.

Syrian security forces killed at least 20 people on Wednesday, including 17 in a tank-backed raid on the flashpoint city of Homs, activists said.

The Local Coordination Committees, which organizes the anti-regime protests on the ground, said 17 people were killed in the central city of Homs, one in Hama to the north and two in Sarmin, Idlib province.