U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon on Friday demanded that Syria unconditionally let in humanitarian aid and said the government was "afraid" to let in the U.N. emergency aid chief into the country, as an aid convoy was denied access to the battered Baba Amr district of Homs.

"The Syrian authorities must open without any preconditions to humanitarian communities," Ban said.

Paris prosecutors on Friday opened a preliminary murder probe into an attack on a media center in Syria's Homs in which a French photographer was killed and a French journalist wounded.

The February 22 rocket attack in Homs' Baba Amr district killed French photographer Remi Ochlik as well as veteran Sunday Times reporter Marie Colvin, and wounded Le Figaro reporter Edith Bouvier of France and British photographer Paul Conroy.

Egyptian newspapers angrily accused the ruling military on Friday of caving in to U.S. pressure to allow foreign NGO workers, including a number of Americans, to escape trial on charges of illegal funding.

One of them also accused the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) of trashing the concept of an independent judiciary, insinuating that it had strong-armed the courts into lifting a travel ban on the suspects.

Thousands of Iraqis demonstrated against Syrian President Bashar Assad in a protest on Friday in the mostly Sunni town of Heet, condemning a bloody crackdown by his regime.

The protesters, who gathered outside al-Faruq mosque in the center of the western town, shouted slogans describing the Syrian leader as a "coward" and "the enemy of God," and called for violent resistance against his rule.

France will close its embassy in Syria to denounce the "scandalous" repression by President Bashar Assad's regime, President Nicolas Sarkozy said Friday at the close of an EU summit.

French Foreign Minister "Alain Juppe and I have decided to close our embassy in Syria," Sarkozy told a news conference.

Israel is keeping the option of military action against Iran open if the international community does not halt its suspected nuclear weapons drive, Foreign Minister Avidgor Lieberman said Friday.

"We are still waiting. We want to believe that the international community will be able to handle this threat... But again we keep all options on the table," Lieberman said when asked about the possibility of a strike on Iran.

The U.N. rights body appealed to Syria on Friday to respect international law after receiving unconfirmed reports of 17 "grisly" executions as forces overran Baba Amr in the city of Homs.

"We are alarmed at reports starting to come out of the Babr Amr district of Homs after it was taken over by Syrian forces yesterday," said Rupert Colville, spokesman for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Israel's state comptroller has questioned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over lavish private trips abroad he made that were financed by businessmen, the Haaretz newspaper reported on Friday.

It said he was questioned in secret for more than two hours at the start of the week, over an affair which broke out almost a year ago after an investigation by a private television station, Channel 10.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin stopped short of backing Bashar Assad in the Syrian crisis, saying Russia had no special relationship with his regime and refusing to predict that the president would stay in power.

With pressure mounting on Moscow to harden its line against Assad, Putin called on both the Damascus regime and opposition rebels to agree a ceasefire but also criticized the West for backing the rebels in the conflict.

Syrian security forces on Friday killed 75 people across the country and opened fire to disperse demonstrations in the cities of Aleppo and Damascus as thousands took to the streets, activists and monitors said.

The Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said among the victims were several children, two women and 14 summarily executed in the flashpoint Homs neighborhood of Baba Amr.