Syrian security forces on Wednesday killed thirteen people across the country, “including two army deserters, two women and a man who died under torture,” activists said.

Nine people were killed in the central opposition bastion Homs, two in the restive countryside around Damascus, one in the northwestern province of Idlib and another in the northern province of Aleppo, the Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on ground, said.

At least one mortar round struck the outer compound wall of the Turkish embassy in Baghdad on Wednesday, but caused no casualties, an Iraqi official said, amid tensions between the two countries.

A mortar round struck the perimeter of the mission in Waziriyah, in north Baghdad and outside the heavily fortified Green Zone that is home to the U.S. and British embassies and parliament, an interior ministry official said.

European Union foreign ministers are set to slap fresh sanctions on Syria next week, adding 22 individuals and eight companies to an existing blacklist, EU diplomats said Wednesday.

"As long as the repression continues we will step up our restrictive measures," said an EU diplomatic source speaking on condition of anonymity.

An Israeli air raid on the northern Gaza Strip killed one Palestinian and wounded two on Wednesday, a spokesman for the Hamas-run emergency services told Agence France Presse.

The strike hit a field used by Hamas militants just east of the town of Beit Hanun, Palestinian security sources said.

Syria's state-owned media on Wednesday accused Qatar of arming and financing opponents of President Bashar Assad's regime.

Qatar's call to send Arab troops to the country "falls within the framework of the negative role played by Qatar since the start of this crisis... through the financing of armed groups," the Tishrin newspaper charged.

Beijing on Wednesday defended the Arab League's widely criticized observer mission in Syria, as the U.N. Security Cocil struggled to agree on a resolution on Damascus' crackdown on dissent.

China, a permanent veto-wielding member of the Security Cocil, urged both sides to cooperate with the Arab League, saying the security situation in Syria had improved since it began its mission there.

The Muslim Brotherhood has rejected an Iranian proposal to play a leading role in Syria's government in exchange for President Bashar al-Assad staying in power, one of its leaders told Al-Hayat newspaper.

Iranian intermediaries proposed that the Brotherhood "lead a government (in Syria) on condition we give up our demand to replace Bashar al-Assad," the group's deputy secretary, Mohammed Farouq Tayfour, told the London-based daily.

Hosni Mubarak's doctor said the former Egyptian president is not undergoing chemotherapy for cancer but suffers from weak muscles and limited mobility, in a rare interview published Wednesday.

"We are still running tests to ascertain that he does not have this disease (cancer). It is still not 100 percent that he has it and he has not undergone any chemical treatment," oncologist Yasser Abdel Kader told the government daily al-Ahram.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday defended Russia's trade with Syria amid growing controversy over a mysterious shipment that reportedly delivered a supply of arms to Damascus.

Lavrov was asked to address criticism from Washington's U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice that followed reports that the shipment brought munitions to President Bashar Assad's forces amid their crackdown on protesters.

Russia warned Wednesday that a military strike on Iran would be a "catastrophe" with the severest consequences which risked inflaming existing tensions between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.

"As for the chances of this catastrophe happening, you would have to ask those constantly mentioning it as an option that remains on the table," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said when asked on the chances of military action.