President Bashar Assad said Syria would not bow down in the face of mounting international pressure over his lethal crackdown on dissent, in an interview with The Sunday Times.

Assad told the British weekly newspaper he was "definitely" prepared to fight and die for Syria if faced with foreign intervention.

Syria's president has reached "a point of no return" and faces the same fate as former despots in Libya and Iraq, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Saturday.

"I think that he went beyond the point of no return, no way that he will he resume his authority or legitimacy," Barak told a defense summit, predicting Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime could fall within months under growing international pressure.

Yemen's embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh said on Saturday he would hand the country over to the military if he were to step down as demanded by the opposition.

"We... are ready to make sacrifices for the country. But you will always be there, even if we step down," Saleh told loyalist troops, in statements carried by the official Saba news agency.

Russia's point man on Africa said Saturday that Moscow was relieved that murdered Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi's son Seif al-Islam had been arrested and had escaped "summary justice".

"We are happy that this time the new authorities in Libya did not resort to summary justice for Seif al-Islam, the son of the ousted leader Gadhafi," the Russian presidency's special representative for Africa Mikhail Margelov said.

A Bahraini teenager was killed when he was struck by a police car in a Manama suburb where a protest was underway, an opposition group said Saturday, but officials said he died accidentally.

Two other people were wounded in the incident, al-Wefaq, the largest Shiite opposition group in Bahrain, said in a statement.

U.S. forces shot dead two Iraqi civilians south of Baghdad on Saturday following a bomb attack on their convoy, Iraq security officials said, while the U.S. military denied its soldiers opened fire.

"A roadside bomb hit a U.S. convoy in Yusifiyah on the road to Hilla," an interior ministry official said. "American forces opened fire randomly, killing two civilians and wounding five."

Libya's interim Prime Minister Abdel Rahim al-Kib said Saturday that Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, the son of the slain leader of Libya, will be given a "fair trial."

"I reassure our people and the world that Seif, and those with him, will be given a fair trial in which international rights and norms will be guaranteed," Kib told a news conference in Zintan after formally announcing the arrest of Moammar Gadhafi's favorite son.

Honking cars, tears of joy and praise to Allah: in the cradle of the Libyan uprising the capture of Seif al-Islam, the old regime's favorite son, was celebrated with joyous relief.

As the news spread, cars gravitated to Benghazi's Tahrir Square from all over, passengers hanging through rolled-down windows waving Libya's new flag.

Dozens of protesters gathered in front of the U.S. consulate in west Jerusalem on Saturday in support of the embattled Syrian regime of Bashar Assad.

Arab-Israeli and Palestinian protesters waved Syrian flags and held portraits of Assad, an Agence France Presse photographer reported. Israeli police and security guards deployed outside the consulate did not intervene.

An Iranian general killed in a massive explosion at a munitions base outside the capital on November 12 was working on an intercontinental missile, his brother told a government-run newspaper.

General Hassan Tehrani Moqaddam died while working on a "project related to intercontinental ballistic missiles," Mohammad Tehrani Moqaddam, a Revolutionary Guards commander, told Saturday's Iran newspaper.