Syrian security forces killed 10 people on Friday when they opened fire on protesters in several cities, Rami Abdul Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP by telephone.

"Ten demonstrators were killed today," said Rahman.

New regime forces in Libya were regrouping on Friday for a new bid to take full control of Moammar Gadhafi's hometown Sirte after a reverse at the hands of the fugitive strongman's remaining loyalists.

National Transitional Council (NTC) troops remained in the central police headquarters to which they retreated two kilometers on Thursday under heavy fire from Gadhafi forces, an Agence France Presse correspondent reported.

Captured soldier Gilad Shalit is to return to Israel on Tuesday at the same time as 450 Palestinian prisoners are freed if the terms of a swap deal are respected, a senior Israeli official said on Friday.

"We hope that the timetable laid out in the agreement will be respected and that Gilad Shalit will return home on Tuesday," said the official from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office told Agence France Presse, saying a first tranche of prisoners would be released at the same time.

The oil-rich Gulf States have called for an emergency Arab foreign ministers' meeting on the mounting bloodshed in Syria as Damascus shows no let-up in its deadly crackdown on protests.

In a statement received by Agence France Presse late Thursday, the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council said the meeting should address "the situation in Syria, which has deteriorated sharply, particularly in its humanitarian dimensions, and steps that could help end the bloodshed and halt the machine of violence."

Omanis vote Saturday to elect the powerless Majlis al-Shura consultative council, which Sultan Qaboos pledged to vest with some authorities in response to unprecedented social unrest.

Some 518,000 eligible voters out of about two million Omanis have been called to take part in the polls in which 1,133 candidates, including 77 women, are competing for four-year terms in the 84-seat council.

The West is trying but failing to instill "Iranophobia," Iran's supreme leader said Thursday in remarks that appeared to be prompted by, but did not directly address, U.S. allegations of a thwarted Tehran-sponsored assassination plot.

"The repeat of ineffective and stupid methods by hapless and distracted policymakers in the West (to spread) Iranophobia will again bear no result," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in an army base in the western city of Kermanshah, the official IRNA news agency reported.

U.S. President Barack Obama Thursday demanded answers from the pinnacle of Iran's government over an alleged plot to kill the Saudi envoy to Washington and said the facts of the plan were not in dispute.

But he also declined to say whether U.S. officials believed that the alleged scheme was endorsed at the very highest levels of the Iranian regime, though ascribed it to a pattern of "dangerous and reckless" behavior by Tehran.

Britain's Foreign Office has again summoned the Syrian ambassador to London over the alleged intimidation of exiled activists, Foreign Secretary William Hague said Thursday, urging Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down.

It is the third time this year that Syrian ambassador Sami Khiyami has been summoned by the British government amid unrest in the Arab nation, while it also rescinded his invitation to Prince William's wedding in April.

Syrian troops and armed dissidents clashed in two towns on Thursday, with at least 14 people killed, as the EU announced sanctions on a key Syrian bank in protest at its deadly crackdown on dissent.

In the first clash reported by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights five people were killed in Banash town in Idlib province in the northwest.

Kuwait's lower court on Thursday sentenced to death a member of the Gulf state's ruling family for killing his nephew, also a royal, a court statement said.

Sheikh Faisal Abdullah al-Sabah was convicted of shooting Sheikh Basil Salem al-Sabah to death at the latter's palace in June 2010, the statement said, apparently over a dispute on board membership in a sports club.