A Turkish prosecutor has launched a probe after two Syrian refugees staying in a Turkish border camp were handed over to Syrian security forces, Anatolia news agency reported Friday.

Syrian dissident army colonel Huseyin Mustafa Harmus and Mustafa Kassum were taken out of a refugee camp in Altinozu, Hatay province, near the Syrian border and delivered to Syrian security forces "by force," said the prosecutor's office in southern Adana province, in a statement cited by Anatolia.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak approved the construction of buildings in the West Bank to serve as an educational facility for special-needs youth, his office said on Friday.

The site, named Gevaot and located in the Gush Etzion bloc, "is not a settlement nor is it new in the Gush Etzion regional council, and is part of Alon Shvut," a nearby settlement, the statement from Barak's office said.

Seven Iranian engineers kidnapped near Syria's embattled city of Homs in late December have been released, the official IRNA news agency reported Friday, quoting an informed source at the ministry of energy.

The seven were working at a power plant in Jandar, near Homs, the city in central Syria that has become one of the flashpoints in the uprising against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

Thousands rallied outside Egypt's defense ministry on Friday demanding the military rulers' ouster on the eve of a planned civil disobedience campaign marking Hosni Mubarak's overthrow a year ago.

During the day, several groups of protesters converged near the ministry building, as the security forces blocked off access with barbed wire and tanks.

The Hamas prime minister in Gaza, Ismail Haniya, arrived in Tehran on Friday on a three-day trip and is due to speak at a rally marking the 33 anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution on Saturday, state media reported.

The state television website said the Palestinian will meet with Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other high ranking Iranian political and security officials.

The Arab League is likely to launch a "Friends of Syria" coalition and appoint a special envoy to the country at a meeting this weekend, a Western diplomat said Friday.

The diplomat also said that Iranians were "on the ground" giving technical help to Syrian intelligence services, and warned that President Bashar al-Assad's regime had "many levels of violence" yet to use.

Saudi King Abdullah said on Friday that world confidence in the United Nations had been shaken after the world body failed to adopt a resolution against the Syrian regime's deadly crackdown on protests.

"We all used to take pride in the United Nations which used to bring us together and not divide us... but what took place does not augur well as world confidence in the United Nations has undoubtedly been shaken," King Abdullah said in a short televised speech.

The International Union of Muslim Scholars headed by influential cleric Youssef al-Qaradawi organized a rally in Qatar on Friday in support of anti-government protesters in Syria.

Members of the opposition Syrian National Council, which has been meeting in the capital Doha, joined the rally by several hundred people after the main weekly Muslim prayers, an Agence France Presse correspondent reported.

Forty-two people were killed across Syria on Friday, including security force members, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, as anti-regime protesters took to the streets under the banner of "Russia is killing our children."

At least 20 died in in the central protest hub of Homs, among them two children killed by shelling in the Baba Amr neighborhood, the Observatory said.

Israel and the United States recently carried out a successful test of the Arrow anti-missile system over the Mediterranean Sea, the Israeli defense ministry said on Friday.

During the target-only tracking exercise, the Arrow's radar tracked a target "representative of potential ballistic missile threats facing Israel," the statement read, and "transferred information to the Citron Tree Battle Management Controller, which prepared a simulated intercept solution."