Caretaker Interior Minister Marwan Charbel and General Security chief Abbas Ibrahim returned to Lebanon from Turkey Friday night where they discussed the case of the Lebanese pilgrims held in Syria's Aazaz region, reported the daily An Nahar Saturday.

Concerned sources told the daily that they achieved “significant progress in this case, which may lead to the pilgrims' release within a week should no new obstacles thwart these efforts.”

Riot police fired tear gas at hundreds of demonstrators on Friday, injuring at least a dozen people, in a bid to break up a four-day protest against a major construction project in Istanbul's iconic Taksim Square.

Several of the wounded were left lying on the ground unconscious after they were hit with large quantities of tear gas and pepper spray, while two people were hospitalized with injuries to the head, an Agence France Presse photographer witnessed.

Syria's divided opposition group officially expanded early Friday to include 43 new members, after eight days of meetings marred by internal bickering and international pressure.

The total number of National Coalition members is now 114, acting chief George Sabra told reporters, adding that the general assembly was now finished.

Syrian soldiers have killed three Westerners, including an American woman and a British man, both Muslims, in northwest Idlib province near the Turkish border, a monitoring group reported late Thursday.

"They were shot dead during an ambush in the Idlib region and the army found them with maps of military positions," said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Turkish police have rounded up 12 people suspected of ties to a "terrorist organization" in a string of raids across Turkey, the governor of the southern city of Adana said on Thursday.

Local media reported the suspects were affiliated with al-Qaida and the jihadist al-Nusra Front battling the regime of Bashar Assad in Syria.

Caretaker Interior Minister Marwan Charbel and General Security Chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim headed on Thursday to Turkey to discuss the case of the abducted Lebanese pilgrims.

According to local newspapers, Charbel and Ibrahim will hold talks with senior Turkish officials and the team that was tasked to follow up the case.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu arrived Wednesday at a stalled meeting of Syria's divided opposition in Istanbul, in what is likely an effort to push for more progress at talks deadlocked by infighting.

U.S. ambassador to Syria Robert Ford and a top French diplomat on Syria also arrived at the meeting of the main opposition National Coalition, which has failed to find common ground on key issues including whether to take part in a peace conference proposed by the United States and Russia.

Pakistan's incoming prime minister Nawaz Sharif Tuesday admitted it was a "tragedy" that a country with a nuclear arsenal was crippled by chronic electricity shortages.

Years of mismanagement, underinvestment and corruption in the power sector have led to Pakistanis suffering blackouts of up to 20 hours a day in the blistering heat of summer, when temperatures reach up to 50 Celsius.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday visited his country's volatile border with war-torn Syria, urging citizens to keep welcoming refugees after deadly bombings early this month fueled local resentment.

"We should help our brothers in need. They are here because they believe in us and they have confidence in us," he told residents of Reyhanli, a small south-eastern border town where 51 people were killed and about 100 injured in twin car bombings on May 11.

The United States, Turkey and Qatar called Friday for an urgent debate on Syria at the U.N.'s top human rights body next week, citing the escalating conflict and the regime's assault on the central town of Qusayr.

"We ... request the Human Rights Council to hold an urgent debate on the deteriorating situation of human rights in the Syrian Arab Republic, and the recent killings in al-Qusayr," the ambassadors of the three countries wrote in their request to council president Remigiusz Henczel.