Egyptian security used water cannon and fired shots into the air as protesters threw petrol bombs and stones into the grounds of the presidential palace in Cairo on Friday, an AFP correspondent said.

The clashes came amid rallies in several cities against Islamist President Mohammed Morsi following unrest that killed 56 people, mostly in Port Said, after 21 residents were sentenced to death over a football-related riot in 2012.

The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross called on all sides of the Syrian conflict to help his organization access more of the war-ravaged country with desperately needed aid.

Peter Maurer told Agence France Presse in an interview that his organization had distributed food and other urgent aid items to more than 1.5 million people last year, and had helped 17 million Syrians access safe water.

January was Iraq's deadliest month since September, Agence France Presse data showed Friday, as militants shattered a relative calm and the country grapples with a political crisis and anti-government rallies.

The violence largely targeted security forces and officials, and struck Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities, mostly north and west of Baghdad.

Tens of thousands of Iraqis gathered in Sunni-majority parts the country on Friday in new rallies against Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a week after eight demonstrators were shot dead amid a dire political crisis.

Thousands demonstrated in Fallujah, just west of Baghdad, where the killings took place at the hands of the army, railing against their alleged marginalization at the hands of Iraq's Shiite-led authorities.

Some 420,000 people -- half of them children -- in the hard-hit Syrian region of Homs are in desperate need of humanitarian aid, the U.N.'s children's agency said Friday.

"These people need life-saving assistance," UNICEF spokeswoman Marixie Mercado told Agence France Presse, pointing out that many of the 420,000 people most in need of help were living in "shelters with blasted-in windows."

Algeria's ruling National Liberation Front said on Friday it would extend its hunt for a new leader, a day after voting to oust its chief in the party's biggest internal crisis in a decade.

The FLN said it would continue its consultations beyond Saturday, when it was due to have elected a new leader, amid wrangling between various factions within the party.

Thousands of Egyptians took to the streets on Friday in a show of opposition to Islamist President Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood after a wave of deadly unrest swept the country.

Protesters braved rare Cairo rainfall to march to Tahrir Square and the presidential palace, chanting "Freedom!" and "Morsi is illegitimate!"

Saudi King Abdullah on Friday appointed one of his brothers, Moqren bin Abdul Aziz, as a deputy prime minister, making him second in line to the throne, the official SPA news agency said.

"Prince Moqren bin Abdul Aziz, adviser and special envoy of the king, has been named second vice president of the Council of Ministers," said the SPA report.

Tens of thousands of Sunni protesters blocked a major highway in western Iraq on Friday, as an al-Qaida-affiliated group called on Sunnis to take up arms against the Shiite-led government.

The protest comes at a time of mounting sectarian tensions in Iraq. Minority Sunnis complain of official discrimination against them, and the arrests of bodyguards of a senior Sunni politician in December have sparked weekly anti-government demonstrations.

Bishops from the Iraq-based Chaldean Church elected the archbishop of Kirkuk as their new patriarch on Friday at a synod held in Rome instead of Baghdad for security reasons, church websites said.

Louis Sako will replace Emmanuel III Delly who retired in December after reaching the age limit of 85 in the Christian church which recognises the authority of the pope.