An explosion at a state-run oil field in southern Iran killed a worker and injured three others on Friday, while a refinery in central Iran was hit by a fire, the Mehr news agency reported.

It said a rig at the Bibi Hakimieh oil field in the southern province of Bushehr was rocked by a blast when a huge amount of gas was released during drilling.

At least 37 people were killed Friday as Syrian security forces opened fire, encircled mosques and carried out arrests in a bid to break up anti-regime protesters who are now calling for a no-fly zone in Syria to protect civilians and soldiers deserting the army, the Syrian Revolution General Commission said.

"Eight civilians were killed in various neighborhoods of Hama, 11 others in the city of Homs and one civilian was killed in Qusayr, in the region of Homs," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said earlier on Friday in a statement.

NATO formally decided to end its seven-month mission in Libya on October 31, a diplomat said Friday, despite calls from the country's new rulers for air patrols to continue until the end of the year.

Alliance warplanes would wind up the mission on Monday after flying more than 26,000 sorties and bombing almost 6,000 targets in an operation that helped a ragtag rebel force oust veteran ruler Moammar Gadhafi.

At least 32 people were killed and 71 wounded in twin blasts which rocked Baghdad, security officials said on Friday, more than tripling a previously-announced death toll.

A defense ministry official put the toll from Thursday night's twin roadside bomb attacks in Baghdad's Urr neighborhood at 32 dead and 71 wounded while an interior ministry official said 36 died and 78 were wounded.

A Tunisian Islamist party emerged victorious Thursday in the Arab Spring's first elections, taking 90 of 217 seats on a new assembly nine months after the ouster of dictator Zine el Abidine Ben Ali.

Violent protests broke out in the central town of Sidi Bouzid, where the uprising started last December, after the tally was announced, witnesses and the interior ministry said.

Saudi Arabia's powerful interior minister, 78-year-old Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz, was named the new heir to the throne in a royal decree read out on state television Thursday.

Nayef -- who has been interior minister for nearly four decades and led a crackdown on al-Qaida in the kingdom -- succeeds prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, who died last week in New York and was buried Tuesday in Riyadh.

The U.N. Security Council unanimously voted Thursday to end the mandate for international military action in Libya, closing another chapter in the war against Moammar Gadhafi’s regime, as the country’s new rulers said they would prosecute the ousted strongman’s killers following a global outcry over his death’s circumstances.

The 15-member council ordered an end to authorization for a no-fly zone and action to protect civilians from 11:59 pm Libyan time on October 31. The mandate was approved in March after Gadhafi launched a deadly assault on opposition protests.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem on Thursday held talks with China's special envoy for the Middle East who reaffirmed his country's opposition to foreign interference in Syria, the official Syrian news agency SANA said.

Muallem and envoy Wu Sike met in Damascus for talks during which they spoke of "the relations of solid friendship" between their countries.

South African mercenaries who allegedly took part in Moammar Gadhafi’s failed escape bid are still taking care of his son Seif al-Islam, the Beeld newspaper said Thursday.

The South Africans were hired by a company with close ties to Gadhafi, training his presidential guard and handling some of his offshore financial dealings, the Afrikaans-language paper said.

Syrian security forces and snipers Thursday killed three people, including a teenager, in the central region of Homs and the southern province of Daraa, two hotbeds of dissent, activists said.

"A 15-year-old minor was killed and three people were wounded by security forces during raids," in the town of Dael, near the southern city of Daraa, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in a statement.