U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave the green light Friday to resume $1.3 billion in annual military aid to Egypt despite fears it is slipping in its avowed transition to democracy.

The move marked the denouement of a crisis in the 30-year-old U.S.-Egyptian alliance that erupted over a crackdown in December on pro-democracy groups by Egypt's interim military rulers.

Nearly 1,000 Syrians demonstrated Friday in the Jordanian capital against President Bashar al-Assad's regime, demanding "freedom" in the neighboring country.

"We will not bow. God damn you Bashar," read a banner carried by the demonstrators, outside the Syrian embassy in western Amman.

At least 22 civilians, three regime troops and a rebel were killed on Friday in Syria as government forces bombed towns and clashed with rebels in several areas of Syria and tens of thousands of people took part in "Damascus, here we come" demonstrations, monitors and activists said.

Security forces killed 11 people in Homs, four in Daraa, three in Idlib, a person in Latakia, one in Deir al-Zour, one in Aleppo and another in al-Raqq, the Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said.

The United Nations Friday launched an appeal for 84 million dollars (63 million euros) to help Syrian refugees who have fled abroad because of the current fighting.

Turkey has taken in some 17,000 refugees, Lebanon 16,000, Jordan about 8,500, with Iraq welcoming an unknown number, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement.

Libya has restored full diplomatic relations with Iraq and plans to send an ambassador to Baghdad more than eight years after cutting off ties, Iraq's deputy foreign minister said Friday.

"There was a delegation that came here, and they said that this decision is under discussion at the foreign ministry in Libya and this step will be taken soon, and they took that step yesterday," Labid Abbawi told Agence France Presse.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Friday cautioned against attempts to circumvent the authority of the United Nations as the West seeks to secure Moscow's support in the Syria crisis.

"There's a need to eliminate any loopholes allowing (nations) to act in circumvention of the authority of the Security Council and use force without its approval," Medvedev told a European security conference in Moscow.

The EU agreed to sanction President Bashar Assad's British-born wife Asma, along with his mother, sister, and sister-in-law as the bloc tightened the noose on the Syrian regime Friday.

Diplomats said European Union foreign ministers gathered in Brussels had agreed an assets freeze and travel ban on "Assad's wife, mother, sister, and sister-in-law", and eight other members of his entourage.

U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan will travel this weekend to Moscow and Beijing to discuss the crisis in Syria, his spokesman said Friday, adding that a team sent to Damascus has returned.

The team is back after "three days of intensive talks with Syrian authorities on urgent steps to implement" Annan's proposals on halting the violence.

Hundreds of people took part in night-time protests in the Syrian capital, opposition activists said Friday, ahead of "Damascus, here we come" demonstrations called for across the country.

"Bomb us instead of Daraa, Homs, and Hama," cities where hundreds of civilians have reportedly been killed in a crackdown on anti-regime protests, the demonstrators chanted in Rokneddine neighborhood, according to activists.

Nineteen detainees, including two men sentenced to death and several alleged al-Qaida leaders, escaped from a prison in northern Iraq on Friday, in what one politician said was an inside job.

"Nineteen people, including members of al-Qaida and Ansar al-Sunna, fled from prison in Kirkuk at around 3:30 am (0030 GMT)," a security official said.