Syria is punishing its own people by suspending a free trade agreement with Turkey in retaliation for Turkish sanctions against the Damascus regime, the Turkish economy minister said Sunday.

By cutting off bilateral trade, "the Syrian government punishes its own people, industrialists, exporters and entrepreneurs," Economy Minister Zafer Caglayan said in a statement carried by the state-run Anatolia news agency.

Three children and their father were among at least 30 civilians killed on Sunday as Syrian security forces pressed on with an almost nine-month clampdown on dissent, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

In the flashpoint city of Homs, "a man and three children aged 11, 14 and 16 were killed at dawn in the al-Waer district when the Shabiha (pro-regime militia) opened fire on their cars," said the Observatory.

Islamists trounced their liberal rivals in the opening phase of Egypt's first election since the fall of Hosni Mubarak, figures showed on Sunday, with one in four voters choosing hardline Salafists.

Islamist parties won 65 percent of all votes cast for parties in the first round of parliamentary polls, while the secular liberals who played a key part in the January-February uprising managed just 13.4 percent.

Weeks before the U.S. pullout, Iraq's prime minister confidently predicts that his country will achieve stability and remain independent of its giant neighbor Iran even without an American troop presence.

Nouri al-Maliki also warned on Saturday of civil war in Iran's ally Syria if Bashar Assad falls — a view that puts him closer to Tehran's position and at odds with Washington. The foreign policy pronouncement indicates that Iraq is emerging from the shadows of U.S. influence in a way unforeseen when U.S.-led forces invaded eight years ago to topple Saddam Hussein.

Bahrain's interior ministry said Sunday a blast occurred inside a minibus parked near the British Embassy, but there were no immediate reports of serious damage or injuries.

A brief statement posted by the ministry said the explosion occurred in a public parking area near the British diplomatic compound in the capital Manama. Investigators sealed off the area.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak expressed deep concern on Saturday after early results in Egypt's post-revolution election showed Islamists sweeping to victory.

"The process of Islamization in Arab countries is very worrying," Barak told Israel's private Channel Two television.

Gun and bomb attacks in Iraq killed five people, including an army brigadier general, and wounded three others on Saturday, security officials said.

Unknown gunmen shot dead army Brigadier General Fadhel al-Azul and his wife in the Urr neighborhood in northern Baghdad, an interior ministry official said.

The Muslim Brotherhood, expected to win 40 percent of votes in the first phase of Egypt's post-revolution election, stressed Saturday it was a moderate force, not to be confused with hardliners.

The Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party is set to emerge as the dominant force in the country's lower house of parliament for which voting began in a third of Egypt's districts on Monday and Tuesday.

Syria on Saturday condemned a U.N. vote on rights violations by the country's security forces as "unjust," and said it was based on false information from the regime's foes.

The U.N. Human Rights Council resolution passed in a vote on Friday was "unjust and "prepared in advance by parties hostile to Syria," the foreign ministry said in a statement carried by state news agency SANA.

The leader of the main opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) appealed Saturday for a U.N. Security Council resolution to end the regime's deadly crackdown on civilians, while ruling out military intervention.

"What we will seek from the Security Council, above all, are mechanisms for the protection of the innocent civilians," Burhan Ghaliun told journalists on the sidelines of a transitional democracy forum in Sofia.