An al-Qaida splinter group claimed Saturday to have carried out a suicide attack on a military base in southern Algeria which left 24 people wounded.

"We inform you that we are behind the explosion that occurred this morning at Tamanrasset," a message sent to Agence France Presse and signed by the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa said.

The Syrian army launched an offensive early Saturday against rebels in the village of Ain al-Beida, not far from the border with Turkey, the Turkish news agency Anatolia reported.

It quoted witnesses as saying around 2,000 soldiers and 15 tanks were involved in the operation to seize control of the village only a few kilometers (miles) from Turkey.

Egypt's parliament is to probe and "hold accountable" anyone who intervened to allow foreign activists on trial to leave the country, the house speaker said on Saturday.

Saad al-Katatni said parliament would summon officials to explain the decision and "hold accountable those responsible for this crime, which represented a blatant intervention in the affairs of Egypt's judiciary."

A suicide bomber blew up a vehicle in the Syrian city of Daraa on Saturday, killing two people and wounding 20, including security force personnel, the official SANA news agency reported.

The "suicide terrorist" struck near the al-Masri roundabout in the center of the city, south of Damascus, which was the cradle of the uprising that erupted against President Bahar Assad's regime in March last year, SANA said.

Syrian troops shelled Saturday several districts in the rebellious central city of Homs where a standoff continued between a Red Cross convoy and the government that has blocked the delivery of food, medical supplies and blankets to the thousands still stranded in the area.

Abu Hassan al-Homsi, a doctor at a makeshift clinic in Khaldiyeh district of Homs, said he treated a dozen wounded.

Thousands of Bahrainis have launched what they said would be a week of daily sit-in protests in a Shiite village to commemorate an uprising crushed a year ago, witnesses said on Saturday.

They said the protesters gathered on Friday at a rallying point renamed "Freedom Square" in al-Muqsha village, about seven kilometers (four miles) west of Manama.

A suicide bomber blew up a vehicle at an elite Republican Guard camp southwest of the Yemeni capital on Saturday, days after al-Qaida claimed a similar attack that killed 26 soldiers, military sources said.

One soldier was killed in the blast at the base in Bayda, 170 kilometers (105 miles) from Sanaa, the sources added. Five other soldiers were also wounded.

Syrian forces seemed to be directly targeting journalists in Homs, wounded French reporter Edith Bouvier and photographer William Daniels said Saturday, after escaping the besieged city.

"There were at least five successive explosions, very near. We really had the impression that we were directly targeted," the Figaro daily quoted the pair as saying after their return to Paris Friday.

The United States called Friday on all countries to condemn the "horrific" violence in Syria as President Barack Obama declared that leader Bashar al-Assad's days were numbered.

U.S. officials voiced outrage as the Red Cross said it was unable to gain access to the vanquished rebel stronghold of Baba Amr in Homs, where government forces were reported to be conducting reprisals after a month-long bombardment.

Iran's media reported a huge turnout on Friday in parliamentary elections described as a "blow" to the West, while voters said they were mostly preoccupied with their sanctions-hit economy -- and non-voters spoke of a "sham" poll.

The elections to fill the 290 seats in parliament, known as the Majlis, were the first since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was returned to office in a disputed 2009 vote that prompted opposition cries of fraud.