Yemeni troops took control of the city of Shuqra on Friday after al-Qaida militants pulled out, the third jihadist bastion in the south to fall in the space of a week, a military official said.

"The army has taken control of Shuqra," said a military official, adding that "troops have taken positions in the center" of the coastal city while militants were seen fleeing.

Syrian authorities have uncovered an al-Qaida plot to bomb Damascus mosques around the main weekly prayers, state media reported on Friday.

A suspect detained on Thursday confessed that he had been planning a suicide bombing during Friday prayers at the al-Rifai Mosque in the heart of the capital, the official SANA news agency reported.

Russia said Friday it is not making any new deliveries of attack helicopters to Syria and has only carried out repairs of helicopters sent there many years ago.

"There are no new supplies of Russian-made attack helicopters to Syria," the foreign ministry said in a statement, adding that "planned repairs were carried out earlier on helicopters supplied to Syria many years ago."

Russia on Friday denied discussing Syrian President Bashar Assad's departure with Western nations and warned it may skip a planned conference on the crisis if Iran is not invited as well.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's comments seemed aimed at quashing reports from several major capitals about a discernible shift in Russia's approach to its Soviet-era ally that acknowledged the nearing end of Assad's regime.

Nine bodies, some of them mutilated, were found in a town near Damascus, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday.

The Britain-based watchdog said it was unclear who carried out the killings but opposition groups blamed pro-government militia and demanded international action to prevent such "massacres."

The United States on Thursday acknowledged providing communications equipment and other forms of assistance to members of the "peaceful opposition" in Syria.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the aid is part of "non-lethal" assistance to Syrians living under President Bashar Assad's regime, and part of a global effort to support Internet freedom.

Egypt's ruling military council said on Thursday that a presidential run-off election will go ahead as scheduled on June 16 and 17, after a court rejected a law barring one of the candidates.

"The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces has assured that the presidential run-off will take place on schedule on Saturday and Sunday," the official MENA news agency said.

The United States said Thursday it was "deeply disappointed" by a court decision in Bahrain that upheld sentences for some medics involved in protests against the U.S.-allied Sunni regime last year.

Bahrain's appeals court acquitted nine medics arrested at a hospital near the protests and reduced the terms of nine others. But State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that charges on all should be dropped.

The United States voiced hope Thursday that Egypt would preserve a "democratic" government after the country's top court paved the way for the military to assume parliament's powers.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that the United States was still studying the ruling and would not comment on it directly but voiced hope that Egyptians would enjoy the gains from last year's revolution.

Seventeen Egyptian human rights organizations said on Thursday they are challenging a justice ministry order granting army personnel the right to arrest civilians, saying it had "no basis in law."

"The decision creates extraordinary powers that have no basis in law," the groups said, describing the order as "a blatant circumvention of the official end of the state of emergency."