Activists pressing to end Saudi Arabia's ban on women driving have dropped plans for a "drive-in" Saturday after threats of legal action and have opted instead for an open-ended campaign.

"Out of caution and respect for the interior ministry's warnings... we are asking women not to drive tomorrow and to change the initiative from an October 26 campaign to an open driving campaign," activist Najla al-Hariri told Agence France Presse Friday.

Syria's rebel chief and other top leaders have met in Turkey with peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi amid a renewed international push for peace talks, Free Syrian Army's Louay Muqdad said Friday.

"We had a meeting yesterday with Mr Lakhdar Brahimi, in which the leaders of the Free Syrian Army general staff participated along with the supreme military council and other commanders from inside Syria," Muqdad, the FSA political and media coordinator, told Agence France Presse.

The Palestinian security services in the West Bank have arrested three students accused of plotting to build a "drone" with which to attack Israel, a source said Friday.

The three Hebron University engineering students had intended to build a pilotless aircraft equipped with explosives, according to the Palestinian security source.

Some 3,000 civilians trapped in a suffocating Syrian army siege of rebel areas in the city of Homs need urgent food aid, a monitoring group and activists said Friday.

"Three thousands civilians, among them 500 aged over 70, are living exclusively off the little food that had been stored in the besieged districts of Homs," said Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman.

A car bomb explosion killed at least 20 people and wounded dozens more near a mosque in the Damascus province town of Suq Wadi Barada on Friday, a monitor said.

The town is under rebel control and ringed by troops loyal to the regime of President Bashar Assad, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Tens of thousands of people have escaped from the Al Safira district in northern Syria, fleeing non-stop heavy bombing in a "massive exodus", Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said Friday.

The non-governmental organisation, which has staff on the ground in the conflict-ridden country, said some 130,000 people had fled the district in the northern province of Aleppo, including almost all those who lived in the town of Al Safira.

Iraq and Turkey on Friday vowed, following a meeting between foreign ministers, to improve relations between the two countries which have been marred in recent years by a series of disputes.

"We agreed to take new steps in order to improve bilateral relations and to open new horizons," Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told a news conference in Ankara.

Ten bombings and a shooting killed at least 12 people and wounded 19 in Iraq on Friday, officials said.

Nine bombs exploded in and around the city of Baquba, north of Baghdad, killing a total of seven people and wounding eight, a police officer and a doctor said.

A Moroccan court on Friday jailed a teenager for three months for threatening to kill U.S. President Barack Obama on Twitter, judicial sources said.

The 17-year-old identified as Soufiane I. pleaded guilty at a Casablanca court to "electronic crimes" and "calling for violence via electronic media," after posting the death threat last year.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula has warned its response will be "painful" if Yemeni authorities punish prisoners from the extremist network who made a failed attempt to escape their jail.

The security forces foiled an attempt on Tuesday by some 300 al-Qaida inmates to escape in a mutiny at their intelligence-run prison in the capital Sanaa.