Arab ministers are to meet in Saudi Arabia Sunday to mull their next moves on the Syrian conflict after the resignation of U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan and who might succeed him, a top League official said.

The foreign ministers' meeting in the Red Sea city of Jeddah will discuss the "latest developments in Syria and what policy action to take" after Annan's announcement on August 2 that he was stepping down, the pan-Arab bloc's deputy secretary general Ahmed Ben Helli said.

French President Francois Hollande said France was committed to finding a political solution to the Syrian conflict as he paid tribute Saturday to the 88th French soldier killed in Afghanistan.

He noted that France had deployed a field hospital in Jordan "as close as possible to the border with Syria to help not only refugees but also combatants fighting the repression of a regime which is no longer motivated by anything but the fear of its own demise."

Yemeni militia have killed an al-Qaida prisoner who tried to escape but a local militant leader managed to flee as they found an explosives lab in a separate incident, a militia source said on Saturday.

In another development, two soldiers were killed and three wounded in an ambush, an official said.

The Syrian army shelled the Salaheddin district of Aleppo on Saturday in its push to drive out rebels, as gunfire and bomb blasts rang out across Damascus, monitors and state media said.

State television said two bombs exploded in the heart of the capital, without reporting casualties.

Mosques and Islamic centers across the United States came together Friday to condemn Syria's brutal crackdown on dissent and raise funds for civilians trapped in the conflict.

With the holy month of Ramadan heading towards its final week, imams used Friday prayers to denounce Syrian President Bashar Assad as a tyrant and to encourage American Muslims to speak out against ongoing atrocities.

Gunmen shot dead Libyan army general and high-ranking defense ministry official Mohamed Hadia on Friday in the eastern city of Benghazi, one of his sons told Agence France Presse.

"My father was returning from the mosque after Friday prayers with a neighbor when a car stopped in front of them with four people on board," Ahmad Hadia said.

Syrian rebels on Friday captured three journalists who work for state television as they accompanied government troops operating near Damascus, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

"Three Syrian journalists who work for state television were seized by rebels while they were on assignment, accompanying soldiers in al-Tal," just north of Damascus, the monitoring group said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Friday that he would be making "a big mistake" if he attended an international summit in Iran.

"Mr. Secretary General, you do not belong in Tehran," a statement from Netanyahu's office quoted the premier as telling Ban in a telephone conversation.

Syrian troops and rebels fought fierce battles on Friday in the city of Aleppo, where several people died when a shell crashed into a bakery as hundreds queued for bread, Agence France Presse reported.

The Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said regime forces shot dead 115 civilians and rebels across the country.

The United States plans new sanctions targeting Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime and its supporters in a bid to put further pressure on Damascus, a U.S. State Department official said Friday.

"...One of the key forms of pressure is economic sanctions, which in the coming days or very shortly we will be tightening further with additional sanctions (on) both Syrian entities and those who are supporting the efforts of the Syrian government to oppress its own people," the official said.