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."

The United States and Italy back efforts by the Arab League and its plan to send a new observer mission to Syria, Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi said in an interview published Friday.

"We agree with the work of the Arab League and its intention to send a new, larger and more assertive observer mission to verify responsibilities and expose the (Syrian) regime," Terzi told the daily La Stampa after meeting his U.S. counterpart Hillary Clinton in Washington.

Russia on Friday accused the West of being an "accomplice" to the violence in Syria and said the country's opposition bore full responsibility for ending the ongoing violence.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that Syrian President Bashar Assad's promise to stage a new constitutional referendum meant that it was now up to the armed resistance movement to take the next step.

Tanks stormed a neighborhood in the flashpoint Syrian central city of Homs as soldiers launched a house-to-house sweep of the area to crush regime opponents on Friday, activists said.

"The tanks entered the neighborhood of Inshaat overnight," said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.