Syrian President Bashar al-Assad threatens to "fan the flames" of sectarian conflict not only in Syria but in the wider region, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said in talks with the Turkish president, a U.S. official said Saturday.

"Assad and his regime are the source of instability in Syria now and pose the greatest danger to fanning flames of sectarian conflict not only in Syria but beyond," Biden told Abdullah Gul when they met Friday, the senior official told reporters.

Turkish troops killed three Kurdish rebels in southeast Turkey overnight, local security sources said on Saturday.

The army launched an operation against militants of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in a rural area near Lice on Friday night, they said.

Five Yemenis, three civilians and two anti-regime gunmen, were killed on Saturday in shelling by government forces targeting the country's second city of Taez and in shootings, medics and witnesses said.

Three members of one family were killed in shelling blamed on government forces, while two gunmen were shot dead during clashes with forces loyal to President Ali Abdullah Saleh, witnesses said.

The leader of the main opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) on Friday sought "more concrete" international backing against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

"Only collective action by the international community is capable of dissuading the Syrian mafia, now in power, to quit the country or give in to the fight of the Syrian people," Burhan Ghalioun said in Sofia.

Iraqi Major General Qassim Atta on Friday said an explosion near parliament was a botched attempt to kill the prime minister, after an official termed it an attempt on the parliament speaker's life.

At least one person was killed and two wounded in the blast near the Iraqi parliament building on Monday, the cause of which was disputed. MP Muayid al-Tayyeb was one of those hurt.

Egypt said on Friday the country's first post-revolution election had seen a record turnout but it again delayed the release of full results expected to show Islamist candidates sweep to victory.

At a press conference by the election commission chief Abdul Moez Ibrahim, already pushed back by two days, he began announcing figures before abruptly leaving the room saying he had "no more energy" and had "run out of gas."

Russia on Friday lambasted the U.N. Human Rights Council's findings of "gross violations" by Syria as "unacceptable" and warned against using them as a pretext for military action.

"The positions (adopted) in the document, which include the veiled hint of the possibility of foreign military intervention under the pretext of defending the Syrian people, are unacceptable to the Russian side," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

A South African journalist told AFP Friday he was deported from Qatar after being diagnosed with HIV and sacked by the satellite network Al-Jazeera, which is based in the Gulf country.

In response to questions posed by AFP in an email, he said he underwent medical tests required to obtain his residence permit, but was only informed that he had HIV when his status was printed on a medical card months later.

The U.N. Human Rights Council on Friday slammed "gross violations" in Syria following evidence security forces murdered and tortured dissidents including children, as eleven more people reportedly died.

Council members in Geneva overwhelmingly passed a resolution "strongly condemning the continued widespread, systematic and gross violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms by the Syrian authorities" and referred a report on the abuses to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.

More than a thousand Jordanian protesters demonstrated Friday in central Amman calling for the country to be saved from corruption and demanding regime reforms.

"Saving Jordan from corruption is a national duty," read a banner carried by the protesters, including opposition Islamists and youth groups, who marched from Al-Husseini mosque to the nearby city hall in the city center.