Saudi King Abdullah said on Friday that world confidence in the United Nations had been shaken after the world body failed to adopt a resolution against the Syrian regime's deadly crackdown on protests.

"We all used to take pride in the United Nations which used to bring us together and not divide us... but what took place does not augur well as world confidence in the United Nations has undoubtedly been shaken," King Abdullah said in a short televised speech.

Former prime minister Saad Hariri on Friday called on the Arab countries to recognize the opposition Syrian National Council as the “legitimate representative” of the Syrian people.

Hariri warned about “the dangers of the war waged by the Syrian regime against the growing popular revolution across Syria,” said a statement released by his press office.

The International Union of Muslim Scholars headed by influential cleric Youssef al-Qaradawi organized a rally in Qatar on Friday in support of anti-government protesters in Syria.

Members of the opposition Syrian National Council, which has been meeting in the capital Doha, joined the rally by several hundred people after the main weekly Muslim prayers, an Agence France Presse correspondent reported.

Forty-two people were killed across Syria on Friday, including security force members, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, as anti-regime protesters took to the streets under the banner of "Russia is killing our children."

At least 20 died in in the central protest hub of Homs, among them two children killed by shelling in the Baba Amr neighborhood, the Observatory said.

Israel and the United States recently carried out a successful test of the Arrow anti-missile system over the Mediterranean Sea, the Israeli defense ministry said on Friday.

During the target-only tracking exercise, the Arrow's radar tracked a target "representative of potential ballistic missile threats facing Israel," the statement read, and "transferred information to the Citron Tree Battle Management Controller, which prepared a simulated intercept solution."

The United States and Italy back efforts by the Arab League and its plan to send a new observer mission to Syria, Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi said in an interview published Friday.

"We agree with the work of the Arab League and its intention to send a new, larger and more assertive observer mission to verify responsibilities and expose the (Syrian) regime," Terzi told the daily La Stampa after meeting his U.S. counterpart Hillary Clinton in Washington.

Russia on Friday accused the West of being an "accomplice" to the violence in Syria and said the country's opposition bore full responsibility for ending the ongoing violence.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that Syrian President Bashar Assad's promise to stage a new constitutional referendum meant that it was now up to the armed resistance movement to take the next step.

Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has said that his country is ready for any act of provocation by Hizbullah over the deepening crisis in Syria.

During a meeting on Thursday with 15 U.N. envoys in New York, He expressed concern that Hizbullah will use a provocation against Israel as a means of distracting the world from violence in Syria.

Columns of Lebanese army tanks and personnel carriers deployed in the towns of Hnaider and Knaisseh on the northern and northeastern border with Syria in an effort to curb arms smuggling, eyewitnesses said.

TV footage showed the residents of the Wadi Khaled area welcoming the army’s deployment.

Two powerful car bombs targeting security posts ripped through Syria's second city of Aleppo on Friday, killing at least 25 people and wounding 175 as the Free Syrian Army blamed the regime for the attacks.

State television said "armed terrorist groups" carried out the attacks, the first in Aleppo since the outbreak of an uprising against the regime of President Bashar Assad almost a year ago.