A Yemeni court on Saturday ordered a new probe into the alleged involvement of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh in the killing of 45 protesters during the 2011 uprising against his rule.

The court ordered that 12 other Saleh-era officials be questioned on the same March 18 incident during which the ex-autocrat's loyalists and troops opened fire on an anti-regime rally in the capital.

Syrian media and opposition activists said Saturday that a car bomb exploded in the central city of Homs, causing casualties.

The Syrian state-owned Al-Ikhbariya TV said the blast in the city's southern al-Nozah neighborhood was a suicide bomb. It reported casualties but did not give a number.

A car bomb explosion in a majority Shiite area of the Iraqi capital killed four people on Saturday, medical and security officials said.

The explosion, near a clinic in al-Amin district in southeast Baghdad, also wounded 20 people including four children, the medical source said.

Regime forces have retaken the village of Eastern Bweida from insurgents, Syrian state television said on Saturday, four days after the nearby rebel bastion of Qusayr fell to the army and Hizbullah.

"Our heroic troops have restored safety and security in Eastern Bweida," the channel said.

An Egyptian court in the retrial of fallen dictator Hosni Mubarak for alleged complicity in the killings of protesters barred lawyers in civil cases from the proceedings at a brief session on Saturday.

Presiding judge Mahmoud al-Rashidi adjourned the court to Monday, shortly after opening the second hearing in Mubarak's retrial, a criminal case.

Iran on Saturday condemned a deadly attack the day before in neighboring Iraq, in which at least 14 Iranian Shiite pilgrims were killed, the official IRNA news agency said.

"Iran condemns this indiscriminate terrorist act, which is contrary to Islamic and human values," it cited foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Araqchi as saying.

The United Nations scrambled Friday to find fresh troops for its beleaguered Golan Heights peacekeeping force, which Russia said is in "dire straits" as it offered to help.

President Vladimir Putin said Russian troops could replace almost 380 soldiers that Austria says it will withdraw from the ceasefire zone between Israel and Syria because of the increased danger from the Syrian civil war.

An Austrian man, arrested by Syrian intelligence in Aleppo in December while distributing aid, has been freed and was on his way back to Austria, his family said Friday.

Jamal Orabi, a 47-year-old dual Syrian and Austrian citizen, was now in Istanbul on his way back to Vienna, where he was expected on Saturday, the humanitarian group Humanic Relief and a nephew of Orabi told the Austria Press Agency.

Tunisia turned away on Friday eight Muslim preachers who had come from the Gulf to deliver sermons across the country, the interior ministry said on its Facebook page.

"The ministry... has banned the entry of eight people who had come from the Gulf to to carry out religious activities," the statement read, without giving any further details.

Russia on Friday agreed to a U.N. Security Council statement that demanded that its ally Syria allow humanitarian access to the border town of Qusayr.

The British-drafted statement, agreed after Russia had blocked a virtually identical statement at the weekend, called for "immediate, safe and unhindered" access to Qusayr.