Syrian security forces killed 18 civilians on Friday, 15 of them in the flashpoint central city of Homs, where the death of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi galvanized mass protests, rights activists said.

"Fifteen people were killed in Homs," which has been at the heart of military operations this week, Rami Abdul Rahman of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told Agence France Presse.

Iran's intelligence minister on Friday dismissed as "stupid" a U.S. charge that Tehran planned to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington.

Minister Heydar Moslehi, quoted by the state television website, pointed to the reasons he termed the alleged plot as "too mediocre to be believed."

The circumstances surrounding the death of Libya's ousted despot Moammar Gadhafi are unclear and an investigation is needed, the U.N. human rights chief said Friday.

"On the issue of Gadhafi's death yesterday, the circumstances are still unclear," Navi Pillay's spokesman Rupert Colville said.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy called for forgiveness and reconciliation in Libya on Friday, adding that Moammar Gadhafi's death is not a cause for celebration despite his crimes.

Libya has found "its freedom and democratic hope. ... Now it is up to the Libyans to turn the page on the terrible years of Gadhafi and to build this future. The Libyans have a duty of forgiveness, reconciliation and unity," Sarkozy said on the sidelines of a development conference held as part France's chairmanship of the G20.

NATO ambassadors gather at 14:30 GMT on Friday to discuss an end to the alliance's six-month air campaign in Libya following the death of Moammar Gadhafi and the fall of his last bastions, diplomats said.

A NATO official said ambassadors from the 28-member alliance would meet in Brussels "with Libya on the agenda of talks".

Turkish jets kept up bombing raids on Kurdish rebel bases in northern Iraq overnight, as the rebels confirmed that some Turkish troops crossed into Iraq, officials and media reports said Friday.

Turkish war planes continued to take off from Diyarbakir, the regional capital of the mainly Kurdish southeast, to strike at Kurdish rebels who killed 24 soldiers in a string of coordinated attacks on Wednesday, local security forces said.

The U.N. Security Council will vote Friday on a resolution calling on Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh to immediately stand down and condemning the killings blamed on his government.

The proposed resolution, which has the backing of all five permanent members of the Security Council, "strongly condemns" government violence against demonstrators and backs a Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) peace plan under which Saleh must hand over power.

NATO's operation in Libya can be considered over now that Moammar Gadhafi is dead and the new regime is in control of the entire country, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said Friday.

"I think we can say that the military operation is finished, that the whole of Libyan territory is under the control of the National Transitional Council and that, subject to a few transitory measures in the week to come, the NATO operation has arrived at its end," Juppe told Europe 1 radio from India.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is ready to partially freeze West Bank settlement building if it will bring the Palestinians back to direct talks, an Israeli newspaper reported on Friday.

According to Haaretz, the offer was made in a conversation with Colombian Foreign Minister Maria Angela Holguin on Wednesday during a surprise visit to the region in order to try and help the parties reach some kind of agreement on how to resume talks.

A grand jury in New York has indicted two Iranian men in an alleged plot to get Mexican gangsters to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington, court papers showed Thursday.

The indictment was the next stage in the legal process after the initial complaint against Manssour Arbabsiar, who is in custody, and co-defendant Gholam Shakuri, who is at large.