The U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday condemned the Syrian government's "escalation" of the country's war and backed the role of the opposition coalition in transition talks.

But Russia, Syria's key diplomatic ally, fiercely opposed the resolution, branding it a potential obstacle to peace negotiations expected to be held in Geneva next month.

Car bombs mainly targeting Shiite-majority areas of Baghdad killed at least 10 people on Wednesday, security and medical officials said.

The bombs in Kadhimiyah and Sadr City in north Baghdad, Saidiyah in the south and Mashtal and Baghdad Jadida in the east also wounded at least 45 people, the officials said.

The Tunisian government has decided to ban the congress of hardline Salafist group Ansar al-Sharia due to take place at the end of this week, the ruling Islamist party's leader said Wednesday.

"The government has decided to prohibit this congress whose organizers have not obtained prior permission from the authorities as required by law," Ennahda party chief Rached Ghannouchi told a news conference.

Protesters and Israel forces clashed in the West Bank on Wednesday as thousands of Palestinians commemorated the Nakba (catastrophe) of the Jewish state's creation in 1948, during which 760,000 Palestinians fled their homes.

Soldiers fired rubber bullets at protesters gathered in front of Ofer military prison near Ramallah, wounding 15 of them, Palestinian medical officials said.

Gunmen on Wednesday attacked and set fire to a police station in Libya's eastern city of Benghazi to avenge the death of a colleague in an overnight incident, a security official said.

Policemen withdrew from the Alhadek police station which was then torched by the attackers, while gunfire reverberated around the complex, an Agence France Presse correspondent reported.

Militants in the Gaza Strip fired a projectile that hit an open field in southern Israel on Wednesday causing no damage or casualties, police told Agence France Presse.

Spokeswoman Luba Samri said it struck in the Eshkol region. A military spokeswoman could not say whether the projectile was a mortar shell or rocket.

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.