Iran on Friday launched an observation satellite into orbit above Earth, its third since 2009, the official IRNA news agency reported.

"The Navid satellite was launched successfully.... It will be placed into an orbit (at an altitude) between 250 and 370 kilometers," IRNA quoted the head of Iran's Space Organization, Hamid Fazeli, as saying.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta believes there is a "strong likelihood" that Israel will strike Iran's nuclear installations this spring, the Washington Post said Thursday in an editorial.

When asked about the opinion piece by reporters travelling with him to a NATO meeting in Brussels, Panetta brushed it aside.

Two Palestinians in the Gaza Strip were wounded by Israeli airstrikes early Friday morning, Palestinians said, only hours a visit of the U.N. chief to the Hamas-controlled territory.

According to a spokesman for Gaza emergency services, a three-and-a-half-year-old girl was seriously wounded by an airstrike at a home in the northern Gaza Strip town Beit Lahiya, which also left a man moderately wounded.

The International Criminal Court rejected Thursday a request by slain Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's daughter to give information about her brother Seif al-Islam, who is wanted for crimes against humanity.

ICC judges said the application by Aisha Kadhafi was aimed at obtaining permission to contact her 39-year-old brother rather than providing the court with information on the accused, as she had claimed.

A new draft of a U.N. Security Council resolution to stop the violence in Syria contains concessions to Russia in an effort to overcome Moscow's objections, diplomats said on Thursday.

"They are not made explicit in the latest draft but it is very clear what they are referring to," one Western diplomat said, alluding to the doubts that Russia vowed would lead it to veto any "unacceptable" proposal.

The head of the controversial Arab League observer mission to Syria expressed satisfaction with the monitors' effort on Thursday, even as a deadly regime crackdown on dissent continues.

"I swear by God, I am fully satisfied with myself and with all those on the mission in Syria," Sudanese General Mohammed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi told reporters on a brief return to his homeland.

Turkey would consider giving asylum to Syrian President Bashar Assad's family if such a request is made, President Abdullah Gul was quoted as saying by daily Radikal on Thursday.

"There is no such thing right now," said Gul, when asked about Turkey's answer to a possible asylum request from Assad's family.

Russia will not stop selling arms to Syria, a top defense official said Thursday, as Moscow stands by its longtime ally despite mounting international condemnation over the Syrian regime's bloody crackdown on a 10-month-old uprising.

Russia's Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said his country is not violating any international obligations by selling weapons to Damascus.

Saudi Arabia on Thursday beheaded a man convicted of murder in the kingdom's southwest, the interior ministry said.

Abulrahman al-Qarni shot dead fellow Saudi Mushabab al-Khathami during a dispute, said the ministry statement carried by state news agency SPA.

Syria's opposition called protests Thursday to mark the 30th anniversary of the Hama massacre, as the United Nations moved closer to agreement on action to halt a deadly regime crackdown on dissent.

Demonstrations were planned in various cities in memory of the estimated 10,000 to 40,000 people who perished in February 1982 when then president Hafez Assad, father of the current president Bashar, launched a fierce assault on the central town to crush an Islamist revolt.