Jordan's King Abdullah II on Friday asked premier-designate Fayez Tarawneh to form a cabinet for "a limited transitional period" to implement reforms needed to hold elections before the end of 2012.

"I instruct you to form a new government whose top priority is resuming the reform march," the king said in a letter of designation to Tarawneh, 63, who was prime minister and royal court chief in the late 1990s.

The United Nations on Friday put Major General Robert Mood of Norway, a veteran of troublesome truces, in charge of the force monitoring the faltering ceasefire in Syria.

Mood was already heading for Damascus when U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon publicly announced the nomination, diplomats said.

Thousands of Bahrainis demonstrated on Friday against police repression, witnesses said, after the Gulf kingdom insisted it respects the right to protest and that its security forces intervene only when demonstrations turn violent.

The march called by the main Shiite opposition group Al-Wefaq took place west of the capital Manama under the slogan "Democracy unites us," they said.

The three widows of slain al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden and other family members arrived in Saudi Arabia on Friday after being expelled from Pakistan, a Yemeni non-government group head told Agence France Presse.

"The Yemeni woman has arrived in Saudi Arabia along with other members of the Bin Laden family, his children and her brother who was looking after her case in Pakistan," Mohammed Naji Allaw of the NGO Hood said.

Syrian security forces killed at least seven people as demonstrators took to the streets after Muslim prayers in flashpoint cities such as Hama, where shelling by government troops has reportedly killed more than 100 people since Monday.

The Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said two people were killed in the central province of Homs, two in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, one in the northern province of Aleppo, one in the central province of Hama and one in the Damascus suburb of Douma.

Jordanian demonstrators on Friday criticized premier-designate Fayez Tarawneh, a day after he replaced Awn Khasawneh, accused by King Abdullah II of delaying much-needed reform.

"The people want to change policies, not only governments," read a banner among the more than 1,000 protesters, including opposition Islamists, other political parties and youths, who marched in central Amman.

Powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr opposes toppling the Iraqi government, but discussed not renewing the premier's mandate during a visit to Kurdistan, Sadr Movement officials said on Friday.

Sadr arrived in the autonomous Kurdistan region on Thursday, presenting himself as a mediator in a crisis between Kurdistan president Massud Barzani and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

The Syrian authorities are failing to respect a ceasefire pledge to withdraw troops from urban centers in accordance with an agreed peace plan, the European Union said Friday.

"We are very worried about the continued violence despite the ceasefire adopted by the Syrian regime," said a spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

Yemeni local officials said Friday that attackers have blown up a gas pipeline in the south, stopping the country's export of gas.

The officials said the attack is the second in less than a month in the southern province of Shabwa. It was not clear who was responsible.

Syria's exiled Muslim Brotherhood on Friday urged U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon to acknowledge that Damascus had failed to honor a peace plan and to suspend its membership of the world body.

"We ask Ban Ki-moon to announce that Assad's government has failed to honor the peace plan and to declare the plan finished ... at a time when dozens of innocent people are dying," the group said in a statement issued in Britain.