The U.S., French and German leaders pledged to consider new steps to punish Syria after security forces shot dead at least 24 people as tens of thousands staged anti-regime protests on the first Friday of Ramadan.

President Barack Obama spoke separately to France's Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel as Western nations cranked up pressure on Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.

Ousted president Hosni Mubarak, convicted for having cut Internet services during the revolt which toppled him, has pinned part of the blame on his successor as Egypt's ruler, a defense lawyer said on Friday.

A Cairo court on May 28 fined Mubarak and two former ministers a total of $90 million dollars for "damaging the economy" with a telephone and Internet shutdown during Egypt's uprising.

An explosion struck an oil pipeline in Iran's oil-rich southwestern province of Khuzestan early Friday, triggering a blaze that took firefighters hours to put out, news agencies reported.

Abdohossein Rezaeizadeh, spokesman for the provinces' branch of the Iranian national oil company, told the official IRNA news agency that the causes of the blast and the subsequent fire were under investigation.

Israel's air force carried out three new raids on the Gaza Strip overnight, wounding three people, Palestinian witnesses and medics said on Friday.

Two adults and a child were hurt when a training camp of the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, the military branch of Hamas that controls the tiny Palestinian coastal enclave, was hit in the north, the sources said.

Turkey said Friday the Syrian regime's deadly crackdown on civilian protestors is "unacceptable" and "illegitimate", Anatolia news agency reported.

"The developments in Syria as I emphasized before are unacceptable," Anatolia quoted Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu as saying.

Prominent Syrian liberal poet and writer Adonis urged Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down, but called on the opposition to adopt a strict secular ideology, in comments published Friday.

"President Assad should do something. If I were in his place, I would leave the presidency," Adonis said in an interview with Kuwait's al-Rai newspaper.

The Gulf state of Kuwait on Friday urged a halt in Syria's deadly crackdown on pro-democracy protesters and called for dialogue and "true reforms" to end the crisis.

"The state of Kuwait expresses its extreme pain for the continued bloodshed among the brotherly Syrian people," said a statement by a foreign ministry official cited by state news agency KUNA.

Libya's rebel forces on Friday said a NATO strike killed Moammer Gadhafi's youngest son Khamis and 31 others in the disputed town of Zliten, in what would be a severe setback for Tripoli's military leadership.

The claim was denied by government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim, who said "the news about the killing of Khamis by a NATO air strike are very dirty lies to cover the murder of civilians in the peaceful city."

Israeli police deployed in force in Jerusalem's Old City after limiting access to the al-Aqsa mosque compound ahead of the first Friday prayers during Ramadan.

"More than 2,000 police and border guards were deployed in Jerusalem," said a police spokesman, adding access was blocked to the esplanade for Muslim men under the age of 45.

The Obama administration sent its ambassador back to Damascus on Thursday as it incrementally turned up the heat on Syrian President Bashar Assad with tougher rhetoric and new sanctions.

The White House said Assad's deadly crackdown on protesters had put Syria and the Middle East on a "very dangerous path," as Washington extended a raft of recent sanctions to include a businessman close to Assad and his family.