Bombings in Iraq, including a series of blasts mainly targeting Shiite areas of Baghdad, killed at least 29 people and wounded 70 on Wednesday, security and medical officials said.

Car bombs hit Kadhimiyah and Sadr City in north Baghdad, Saidiyah in the south and Mashtal and Baghdad Jadida in the east, killing at least 14 people and wounding at least 47, while a roadside bomb in the Zafraniyah area killed two police, officials said.

Germany's foreign minister is set to meet Israeli leaders Friday and the Palestinian caretaker premier Saturday during his visit to the Middle East to promote a U.S. initiative to revive peace talks, a spokesman said.

Guido Westerwelle told Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas by phone on Wednesday that Germany "unreservedly supports" the initiative, said the ministry spokesman.

A Bahraini court on Wednesday sentenced six tweeters charged with insulting King Hamad to one year in prison, the public prosecutor's office announced.

The six were charged by the lower criminal court with "misusing the right of free expression," it said in a statement.

Internet and telecommunications in Syria were down across the country, the state news agency SANA reported on Wednesday, saying a fault with a fiber-optic cable was to blame.

"Maintenance and repair work is underway to reestablish the Internet and telecommunications across Syria as soon as possible," Bakr Bakr, the director-general of Syria's telecoms firm told SANA.

Rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas have set a three-month timetable to form a unity government and organize elections, officials from both sides said on Wednesday.

The agreement came during a meeting late Tuesday between Fatah's official in charge of reconciliation affairs, Azzam al-Ahmed, and his Hamas counterpart Mussa Abu Marzuq, held at Egyptian security services headquarters in Cairo.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday called on the Syrian opposition to support Moscow and Washington in their efforts to work towards convening a peace conference to end the bloodshed in Syria.

"It is important for all participants to express articulate support for the Russian-US initiative to implement the Geneva communique," Lavrov was quoted as saying in the Swedish town of Kiruna by Russian news agencies.

Syrian troops backed by tanks and warplanes on Wednesday fought to repel an attack on the central prison in Aleppo after rebels blew up its walls in suicide car bombings, a watchdog said.

Around 4,000 prisoners including Islamists and common law criminals are held in the prison on the outskirts of the northern city, which is largely under rebel control, Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Sixty-five years after their ancestors were driven out during the Nakba, the "catastrophe" that befell Palestinians, Arab Israeli youths are returning to the village of Iqrit in the Upper Galilee.

A small Catholic church is all that remains of the village their families fled in 1948 during the conflict that accompanied Israel's declaration of independence.

Two projectiles fired from Syria hit the Israeli-occupied Mount Hermon on Wednesday morning without causing damage or injuries, an Israeli army spokeswoman told Agence France Presse.

"There were two explosions on the Israeli side of the Hermon, we are examining the incident," she said. "We believe this was a result of the domestic situation in Syria."

The Free Syrian Army vowed on Wednesday to punish those committing atrocities, as anger mounted at a video showing a rebel filmed apparently cutting out and eating the organs of a soldier.

"Any act contrary to the values that the Syrian people have paid their blood and lost their homes to will not be tolerated, the abuser will be punished severely even if they are associated with the Free Syrian Army," the main rebel group said in a statement.