Libyan rebel leaders for the first time will hold talks with NATO's 28-nation North Atlantic Council on July 13 to present their plans for democratic transition, the organization’s chief said Wednesday.

Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the rebel forces were making progress in their battle against Moammar Gadhafi's troops while the Libyan leader's "plans to retake country by force have fallen apart."

Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards on Wednesday launched several anti-ship missiles near the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the country's Arabic-language television channel al-Alam reported.

The Guards fired two Khalij Fars (Persian Gulf) anti-ship missiles which Iran says are capable of Mach 3 speed and can hit targets at a distance of 300 kilometers.

Human Rights Watch on Wednesday accused Bahrain of carrying out a "campaign of violent oppression" against its citizens and called for an end to abuses.

Pro-reform protesters took to the streets of Bahrain on February 14, but security forces crushed the demonstrations a month later in a bloody crackdown followed by sweeping arrests.

Bahrain has sentenced one of its citizens and two foreigners to 10 years in prison for spying for Iran's Revolutionary Guards, Akhbar al-Khaleej newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Bahrain's high criminal court sentenced "three defendants to 10 years in prison for spying for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, one of them a Bahraini and two others" who worked as diplomats in Iran's embassy in Kuwait and were sentenced in absentia, the daily reported.

Yemen's oil-rich Gulf neighbors are engaged in "intensive consultations" to resolve the long-running political crisis in Sanaa, Oman's foreign minister Yussef bin Alawi bin Abdullah said.

The six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) "continue to conduct intensive consultations with parties in Yemen to overcome the crisis," Abdullah told Agence France Presse late on Tuesday.

Libyan rebels backed by NATO air power on Wednesday launched a promised assault on a key gateway to Tripoli, attacking positions just 50 kilometers from the capital.

Buoyed by French arms drops and NATO-led air strikes, the rebels attacked positions in the Gualish area, in the plains north of their enclave in the Nafusa Mountains southwest of Tripoli, an Agence France Presse correspondent said.

Syrian troops killed at least 22 people in a crackdown they launched in the flashpoint central city of Hama on Tuesday, a human rights group said.

"At least 22 people were killed in Hama and more than 80 wounded some of them seriously," Ammar Qurabi of the National Organization for Human Rights said on Wednesday.

Amnesty International on Wednesday accused the Syrian regime of committing crimes against humanity during a deadly crackdown over a pro-democracy protest in a border town.

The London-based rights group urged the United Nations to take action over the assault by the security forces and army on Tall Kalakh in May, amid the protests against President Bashar Assad's rule that have swept the country.

The United States on Tuesday called on Syria to withdraw its forces from the flashpoint city of Hama at the hub of an anti-regime revolt, where residents have mobilized to keep out troops.

"We urge the government of Syria to immediately halt its intimidation and arrest campaign, to pull its security forces back from Hama and other cities, and to allow Syrians to express their opinions freely so that a genuine transition to democracy can take place," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

Australia's military conspired with U.S. guards to deny the Red Cross access to prisoners held at Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib jail, including a high-value detainee, said documents published Tuesday.

Its officials also misled the public on the legality of interrogations, before prisoner abuse was exposed in photographs that shocked the world in May 2004, a year after the U.S.-led invasion, a Sydney-based legal lobby group said.