Bomb attacks in central Iraq killed at least 15 people and wounded more than 20 on Saturday, security officials and a doctor said.

The latest bombings came two days after triple blasts killed 19 people in the southern port city of Basra.

The United Nations said Friday that international help is needed to feed 1.5 million people in crisis-torn Syria, but humanitarian corridors were not yet justified.

U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos said almost three million people out of Syria's population of about 20.5 million had been affected by the deadly crackdown on protests launched by President Bashar Assad since March.

The U.N.'s human rights chief is in contact with the Arab League over its efforts to end the deadly crackdown on protests in Syria, a U.N. spokesman said Friday.

The League said Thursday it wants U.N. help in its showdown with President Bashar al-Assad, and diplomats said the League may want a U.N. contribution to an international observer mission that Syria is refusing to let in.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators packed Cairo's Tahrir Square on Friday after days of deadly clashes, demanding the military rulers step down and rejecting their choice of new prime minister.

Ahead of elections due to start on Monday despite the political turmoil, Egypt's Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) tasked Kamal al-Ganzouri, 78, a premier under ousted president Hosni Mubarak, to head a new cabinet.

The United Arab Emirates has called on its citizens in Syria to exercise caution and avoid the areas that witness frequent anti-regime protests.

Isa Abdullah al-Kalbani, director of Citizens' Affairs at the UAE Foreign Ministry, called on citizens to leave Syria and reconsider travel to the country, reported the Emirates News Agency WAM on Friday.

A man convicted of murdering a policeman during a drug trafficking arrest was beheaded on Friday, the Interior Ministry said, raising to at least 71 the number of executions in Saudi Arabia this year.

The ministry, in a statement carried by the state news agency SPA, said Fahd Kahtani had also wounded several other police officers with machinegun fire.

The trial of deposed Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s son Seif al-Islam could be held in Libya under the auspices of the International Criminal Court, its chief prosecutor said Friday.

"The prosecutor proposed as a third possibility that the ICC might, subject to judges' approval, conduct the trial against Seif al-Islam in Libya," Luis Moreno-Ocampo said in a document before the Hague-based court.

The Syrian military vowed Friday to "cut every evil hand that targets Syrian blood," saying recent attacks on elite security forces marked a dangerous escalation in the country's eight-month-old crisis.

The defiant statement signaled the country's violence is worsening as President Bashar Assad tries to quash the most serious threat to his family's 40-year dynasty, under ever increasing international pressure.

Protesters blocked the entrance to Egypt's cabinet headquarters on Friday in a bid to prevent newly-named Prime Minister Kamal al-Ganzuri from entering the building, an AFP reporter said.

The action was in protest at Ganzuri's appointment, one of the organizers, Ahmed Zahran, told AFP, adding that a news conference would follow shortly.

Bahraini authorities have dispersed "rioters" throwing petrol bombs in the Shiite village of Bani Jamra, as tensions remain high in the kingdom, state news agency BNA reported on Friday.

"A number of vandals targeted security forces by throwing Molotov cocktails Thursday evening in Bani Jamra," in the northeast of the Sunni-ruled state, BNA quoted a top police official as saying.