U.S. President Barack Obama sought Friday to allay Riyadh's criticism of his policies on Syria and Iran, telling the Saudi king their two countries remain in lockstep on their strategic interests.

He also assured King Abdullah that the U.S. "won't accept a bad deal" with Iran, as global powers negotiate a treaty reining in Tehran's controversial nuclear program.

A reformed Moroccan Salafi-jihadist sheikh, jailed for life over the 2003 Casablanca bombings, led Friday prayers in the king's presence in Tangiers, a first since receiving a royal pardon in 2011.

King Mohammed VI freed scores of Muslim extremists jailed in connection with the Casablanca attacks after Arab Spring protests swept the country in 2011, among them four radical Salafist leaders including Mohammed Fizazi.

The Syrian government is denying 3.5 million civilians access to U.N. aid convoys in defiance of a Security Council resolution that has seen the crisis worsen, Western powers warned Friday.

Britain and the United States told the United Nations that Damascus bears overwhelming responsibility for denying U.N. relief workers access to an escalating number of people in need.

President Bashar Assad's government bears overwhelming responsibility for an arbitrary and unjustified refusal to allow aid convoys access to 3.5 million Syrians in hard to reach areas, Britain said Friday.

U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos told the Security Council that decisions are "often arbitrary and unjustified" and that Syrian soldiers remove medical supplies from humanitarian convoys at checkpoints, British ambassador Mark Lyall Grant said.

Saudi activists have urged women to defy a traditional driving ban and get behind the wheel on Saturday, the second day of a visit by U.S. President Barack Obama.

"We have fixed a day every month to pursue our campaign," activist Madiha al-Ajroush told Agence France Presse Friday, insisting that it was a coincidence their latest protest and Obama's visit came on the same day.

Israel's refusal to free a final batch of Arab prisoners Saturday is another obstacle to U.S. efforts to broker peace, a senior official in Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party said.

Under the deal that relaunched peace talks last July, Israel agreed to release 104 Arabs held since before the 1993 Oslo peace accords in exchange for the Palestinians not pressing their statehood claims at the United Nations.

Five people including an Egyptian woman journalist were killed in Cairo Friday as police clashed with Islamists protesting against ex-army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's presidency bid, the interior ministry said.

The violence erupted in a deeply polarized Egypt as supporters of deposed president Mohammed Morsi took to the streets of Cairo, Alexandria and other cities to vent their anger at Sisi who overthrew the Islamist leader nine months ago.

U.S. President Barack Obama sought Friday to allay Riyadh's criticism of his policies on Syria and Iran, telling the Saudi king their two countries remain in lockstep on strategic interests.

He also assured King Abdullah that the U.S. "won't accept a bad deal" with Iran, as global powers negotiate a treaty reining in Tehran's controversial nuclear program.

Two Yemeni soldiers and two suspected al-Qaida fighters were killed Friday when special forces stormed a militant hideout in the southern province of Daleh, the defense ministry said.

The force raided an apartment in the Damt area rented by militants a week ago allegedly to plot an attack, the ministry said on its 26sep.net website.

The U.N. on Friday lamented the devastating violence in Syria and extended a probe into the "gross, systematic and widespread" human rights abuses in the war-ravaged country.

The 47-member U.N. Human Rights Council adopted a resolution extending for yet another year the mandate of a commission of inquiry that it had created in 2011.