Russia on Sunday released a physicist who spent eight years in a Siberian prison on charges of spying for China in what supporters maintain was a wrongful conviction motivated by Soviet-style paranoia.

Professor Valentin Danilov was released before dawn from prison number 17 in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, in an early release with over three years of his original sentence remaining, Russian news agencies said.

The U.N.'s top anti-torture body criticized Friday the lack of accountability in Russia for perpetrators of torture, amid a growing number of abuse allegations against security forces.

"We are seeing very few effective investigations, especially criminal investigations that lead to prosecution" of perpetrators of torture in Russia, said vice president of the U.N. Committee Against Torture, Felice Gaer.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen sought Friday to reassure Russia over the requested deployment of Patriot missiles in Turkey near the border with Syria, saying it would be a "defensive only" measure.

NATO spokesman Carmen Romero said Rasmussen had told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in a telephone conversation that such a deployment "would in no way support a no-fly zone or any offensive operations."

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Friday that Moscow has no reason to worry about the Patriot missiles Ankara has asked NATO to deploy on its troubled border with Syria.

"Patriots are strictly a measure of defense, as Russia and other countries already know," Davutoglu told reporters after a meeting with Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib, the head of the newly-formed Syrian National Coalition.

Russia on Friday warned any deployment of Patriot missiles by Turkey on its border with Syria may create a temptation to use the weapons and spark a "very serious armed conflict" involving NATO.

"I understand that no one has any intention to see NATO get sucked into the Syrian crisis," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters, reiterating concerns aired by the foreign ministry on Thursday.

Russia on Thursday warned Turkey against deploying surface-to-air Patriot missiles to protect its troubled border with Syria, saying it should instead use its influence to help broker peace in the war-torn country.

"The militarization of the Syrian-Turkish border is of course a worrying sign," foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich told a briefing.

The United States condemned a bus bombing that injured 17 people in Tel Aviv on Wednesday and undermined attempts to mediate a ceasefire in Gaza, branding it a "terrorist attack."

"These attacks against innocent Israeli civilians are outrageous," the White House said, reaffirming Washington's "unshakeable commitment to Israel's security and our deep friendship and solidarity with the Israeli people.

A Russian cosmonaut and two astronauts from the International Space Station touched down early Monday on the steppes of Kazakhstan in a Russian Soyuz capsule after spending over four months aboard the ISS.

Russia's Yury Malenchenko, Sunita Williams of the U.S. and Akihiko Hoshide of Japan touched down as scheduled just before 0200 GMT, the Russian Space Flight Control Center announced as the message "Landing Accomplished" was flashed on a giant screen.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will seek a meeting of the so-called Middle East quartet over the Gaza crisis when he holds talks with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Asia this week, the Russian news agency Ria Novosti said Sunday.

Russia has condemned as "disproportionate" the Israeli blitz on the impoverished Gaza Strip, where 64 Palestinians have been killed while three Israelis have been killed in rocket attacks by Palestinian militants since Wednesday.

A 6.8 magnitude quake struck Friday in the Pacific in the Kuril island chain off Russia's far east, the U.S. Geological Survey reported.

The U.S. agency said the quake's epicenter was 161 kilometers (100 miles) south west of Severo-Kuril'sk, Russia in the Kuril Islands that extends south of the Kamchatka peninsula.