The U.N. Security Council on Friday unanimously voted to let the U.N. observer mission in Syria stay for a "final" 30 days, but remained bitterly divided over the conflict.

Russia had threatened to veto a Syria resolution for the second time in two days, but its ambassador Vitaly Churkin finally backed a resolution proposed by Britain.

Switzerland on Friday lifted an arms embargo against the United Arab Emirates after the two sides agreed to investigate how Swiss hand grenades sold to the UAE wound up in Syria, the government said.

The temporary embargo was imposed on July 4 after Swiss media published photographs of hand grenades manufactured by the Swiss group Ruag found at an unspecified location in Syria.

Black smoke billowed from ruined homes and three bloodied corpses lay on Friday in a square in Midan, the Damascus district retaken by regime forces early in the day after fierce firefights with rebels.

The Syrian military escorted journalists in two armored personnel carriers into Midan in the south of the Syrian capital after saying it had "cleaned" the district of "terrorists" -- a term the regime uses to describe rebel fighters.

An Israeli protester who set himself alight during a social justice demonstration last weekend died of his injuries on Friday, media reported.

Moshe Silman, 57, set himself ablaze at a demonstration in the city of Tel Aviv on Saturday night and suffered extensive burns. He died at Tel Hashomer hospital near Tel Aviv, media said.

Syrian forces launched an all-out assault on opposition strongholds in Damascus Friday amid unprecedented fierce fighting in the city of Aleppo, Syria’s second city, a day after rebels seized crossings on the Iraq and Turkey borders on the 16-month conflict's deadliest day so far.

Rebel fighters also clashed with troops in several neighbourhoods of Aleppo in what a human rights watchdog said was the fiercest fighting so far in Syria's second city.

Suspected al-Qaida gunmen have shot dead a Yemeni intelligence officer in the south of the country, in the latest attack on security agents, the defense ministry said on Friday.

Ghazi Saeed Beidaha was killed when two "al-Qaida terrorists" driving a motorbike shot him dead in the southern province of Bayda on Thursday night, the ministry said in a statement posted on its website 26sep.net.

The mother of Mohammed Bouazizi, the street vendor whose self-immolation sparked Tunisia's revolution, was given a suspended four-month jail term on Friday for insulting an official, the justice ministry said.

Manoubia Bouazizi, 60, was handed the suspended sentence after being convicted by a court in the central western town of Sidi Bouzid of insulting an official, ministry official Mondher Bedhiafi said.

Russia on Friday dismissed as "rumors" speculation on the Internet that the wife of President Bashar Assad had taken refuge in the country amid the escalating violence in Syria.

Asma Assad has not been seen recently in public in Syria, giving rise to speculation, which started on the micro-blogging service Twitter, that she may have sought refuge in Syria's remaining ally Russia.

Russia will delay its controversial shipment of three attack helicopters and an air defense system to Syria until security is restored in the country, the Interfax news agency reported on Friday.

"The decision to delay the Syrian delivery timeframe is based on the escalating military and political situation in the country and the act of terror in which several senior Syrian officials were killed and injured," the unnamed military source told the news agency.

Syria's Muslim Brotherhood, a key opponent of President Bashar Assad's regime, announced plans Friday to launch an Islamist political party, saying it was ready for the post-Assad era.

"The decision has been taken to create an Islamic party," the head of the Brotherhood's political wing, Ali Beyanouni, told journalists after the group completed a four-day conference in Istanbul.