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.

A U.N. Security Council peace call for Syria has "merit" but "does not respond to the real needs of the Syrian people", the head of main opposition group the Syrian National Council said Thursday.

"The Syrian National Council supports any measure intended to stop the daily slaughter that the Syrian people have lived with for months," SNC president Burhan Ghalioun told Agence France Presse in Paris.

Fierce clashes erupted in Syria on Thursday, with a busload of fleeing civilians among 110 killed, as President Bashar al-Assad's foes described a U.N. Security Council peace call as toothless.

The army attacked a string of towns, while rebel fighters struck military posts in several provinces and announced a command structure to coordinate hit-and-run strikes in and around Damascus.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will attend the next "Friends of Syria" talks in Turkey, an official said Thursday, amid efforts to end the Syrian regime's bloody year-old crackdown.

Clinton will join the April 1 talks in Istanbul after she took part in the first such meeting in Tunis last month that drew 60 countries, including Turkey, Arab states and western powers, spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday slammed as "hypocritical" a U.N. Human Rights Council resolution, which ordered a first probe into Israeli settlements.

"This council has an automatic majority hostile to Israel and is hypocritical," Netanyahu was quoted as saying in a statement released by his office.