Protesters marched to Cairo's Tahrir Square on Friday to join thousands there demanding democratic change, a year after the uprising that toppled veteran president Hosni Mubarak.

After noon prayers, organized marches left Cairo mosques and headed for the square, the symbolic heart of the Egyptian uprising, on a day dubbed "the Friday of Pride and Dignity" by the dozens of pro-democracy groups organizing the rallies.

A Norwegian U.N. employee kidnapped in Yemen earlier this month by members of a tribe in the restive Marib province has been freed following negotiations, the Norwegian government said Friday.

"I am very pleased and relieved that the Norwegian who was kidnapped in Yemen has been released and that he is unharmed," Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said in a statement.

A car bomb near a funeral procession outside a hospital in east Baghdad killed at least 28 people and wounded 50 on Friday, a doctor at the hospital said.

An interior ministry official confirmed the explosion in Zafraniyah, which struck at 11:00 am (0800 GMT), but said it was caused by a suicide attacker driving an explosives-packed car.

New leaders from the countries of the Arab Spring sought to reassure their Western counterparts at the Davos forum that the rise of Islamist parties poses no threat to democracy.

Last year, when a wave of popular revolt swept the Middle East and North Africa, many in the West hoped it might herald a victory for liberalism.

Saudi Arabia will recognize the Syrian National Council as the "official representative" of the Syrian people, a senior member of the opposition group said in remarks published on Friday.

"Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told an SNC delegation he met in Cairo last week the kingdom will recognize the Council as the official representative of the Syrian people," SNC executive council member Ahmad Ramadan told Kuwait's al-Rai newspaper.

The Middle East peace process is at its lowest point in two decades and the events of the Arab Spring have forced it down the world agenda, the Palestian prime minister complained Thursday.

Salam Fayyad, a moderate whose remit does not extend beyond the West Bank, told delegates at the Davos forum of global business leaders that the peace process was desperately in need of outside help.

Unknown assailants shot dead two Coptic Christians in a village of southern Egypt on Thursday, prompting an angry protest by more than 1,500 of their co-religionists, police said.

A police official said Muwad Hassaad and his son Hassaad Muwad Hassaad were gunned down as they were seated in front of their shop in the village of Bahgura, 600 kilometers (360 miles) from Cairo. The assailants fled the scene.

Eleven Iranian pilgrims have been kidnapped in unrest-swept Syria, the foreign ministry said on Thursday, calling on Damascus to help secure their release.

"According to our information, 11 Iranian pilgrims travelling by road to Damascus were kidnapped by an unknown group," said ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast, quoted by the state news agency IRNA.

U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon on Thursday condemned the killing of a Syrian Red Crescent chief and demanded the Damascus government investigate the crime.

Ban is "deeply concerned" at the killing of Abdelrazak Jbeiro, the Syrian Red Crescent secretary general, who was ambushed Wednesday while driving in the restive northwest province of Idlib, said U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky.

Libyan's regular army and array of militias have been torturing loyalists of slain dictator Moammar Gadhafi, several of whom have been killed in custody, human rights groups charged on Thursday.

Amnesty International said that despite promises, Libya's new rulers have made "no progress to stop the use of torture", as Doctors Without Borders suspended its work in the third-largest city Misrata over similar claims.