Gunmen have abducted and killed a senior Libyan air force officer in the eastern city of Benghazi, cradle of the country's 2011 armed uprising, a security official said on Friday.

"Unidentified assailants aboard a pick-up truck in military uniforms abducted a pilot, Colonel Aguila Milud al-Obeidi, while he was at a friend's house in the Al-Guarsha district before killing him," Colonel Mohammed al-Hijazi told Agence France Presse.

Syria's Kurds are planning to create a temporary autonomous government to administer Kurdish regions in the north of the war-torn country, Kurdish officials told Agence France Presse on Friday.

"We think that the crisis in Syria will not end anytime soon, so we need to create democratic self-rule in western Kurdistan," said Salih Muslim, head of Syria's Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD).

Turkey on Friday vowed to "respond immediately" to any violation of its borders by Kurdish separatists fighting in Syria.

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu made the warning following the seizure of a Syrian town on the border with Turkey by rebels from the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, a Syrian branch of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Tens of thousands of Islamists poured onto Egypt's streets on Friday demanding the reinstatement of ousted president Mohammed Morsi, despite warnings by the military of a crackdown on violent protests.

The rallies come a day after Morsi's army-installed successor Adly Mansour vowed to fight for stability against opponents he accused of wanting to plunge the crisis-hit country "into the unknown".

The U.N. is seeking answers from Egypt over the arrests of former president Mohammed Morsi and others following the overthrow of his government on July 3, a spokesman said Friday.

The spokesman for the U.N.'s High Commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, said she had called in Egypt's ambassador in Geneva on July 10 and also written to authorities in Cairo for an explanation of events earlier this month.

An estimated 155,000 Muslims worshiped at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound on the second Friday of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, Israeli police said.

Spokeswoman Luba Samri told Agence France Presse the prayers passed off "without incident" a week after Islam's third holiest site saw some 80,000 worshipers throng the compound.

Britain on Friday announced it was revoking export licences for equipment used by Egypt's military and police amid concerns it could be used against protesters.

The licences concerned cover components for armored personnel carriers and for machine guns, as well as radio and communications equipment, including for tanks, a spokeswoman for the business ministry told Agence France Presse.

Syria's new opposition leader will meet French President Francois Hollande next week as he embarks on a tour of Western capitals, a source in Hollande's office said on Friday.

Ahmad Assi Jarba, elected the head of the main opposition Syrian National Council on July 6, will meet Hollande next Wednesday, the source told Agence France Presse.

Former Algerian finance minister Ali Benouari said he wants to "run for president" in his country's 2014 elections, according to an interview with a Swiss daily on Friday.

Speaking from Geneva, his home for the past 27 years, Benouari told La Tribune de Geneve that he would stand but admitted he had not expected to "announce his candidacy from Switzerland".

Israel deployed its Iron Dome missile defense system near the Red Sea resort of Eilat, which is close to the border with Egypt, an army spokeswoman said.

"An Iron Dome battery was deployed this morning in Eilat," the spokeswoman told Agence France Presse.