8.51am BST

Welcome to Middle East Live. Here's a round-up of the latest news.

SYRIA

• Military reinforcements are heading to Aleppo to continue the fight against the Free Syrian Army, according to an opposition activist group. The Local Coordination Committees group says nine tank carriers, five military vehicles filled with shabiha (pro-Assad militia), and one pickup truck mounted with a machine gun were seen heading towards the airport on the southern bypass highway.





• Syrian rebels fighting the regime of Bashar al-Assad withdrew all their main fighting units from their stronghold in the Salahedin area of Aleppo, after heavy shelling by government forces on Thursday. FSA commanders claimed the withdrawal was tactical and said a small force had stayed behind to oppose any advance by government forces. But the move seemed to mark a significant moment in the fight for control of southern Aleppo, which had raged for more than two weeks, claiming several hundred casualties.

• Despite Thursday's pullback from Salahedin by the FSA, analysts suggest the military balance may be changing. Jeffrey White, a former US intelligence officer who now comments on Syria for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said:

"What they have got – like small arms and RPGs – they are using much more effectively," he said. "They are also using captured anti-aircraft systems like the ZU-23s and Dushkas much better."

The result, White believes, is that the regime is taking ever higher numbers of casualties. "In the last couple of months we are talking about 150-160 killed a day," he said.

• Veteran Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi is expected to replace Kofi Annan as the UN-Arab League joint special envoy for Syria, diplomats said. A former Algerian foreign minister, Brahimi, 78, has been a diplomatic troubleshooter for decades, having served as a UN special envoy for Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti and South Africa.

• Iran, which has been excluded from other meetings on Syria, held its own emergency consultations on Thursday with participants from nearly 30 countries, including Russia and China. There were no conclusions or declarations by the participants, said Iraq’s foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, one of the highest-ranking diplomats there. Mr. Zebari said the gathering was meant to “keep interest alive, after Kofi Annan’s failure to find a solution for Syria.” Iran's foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi repeated Iran’s proposed solution of a national dialogue between the Syrian government and “some popular opposition groups”. The White House dismissed the meeting.

LEBANON

• Michel Samaha, a former Lebanese information minister who is close to Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, has been arrested in Beirut over an undisclosed but "sensitive" security-related issue. According to Beirut's Daily Star newspaper, 20 "highly effective" remote control bombs have been found in Lebanon, allegedly part of a plan to carry out attacks in the country. "This means Samaha has lost the protection he used to have, so that shows that Assad is really weak," one Lebanese analyst told the Guardian. "This guy used to be untouchable."

LIBYA

• Libya's newly formed national assembly elected former opposition leader Mohammed el-Megarif as the country's interim president on Friday. El-Megarif won 113 votes to defeat another opposition leader and human rights lawyer, Ali Zidan, who won 85 votes from the 200-member General National Congress, an assembly created in the first nationwide election since Muammar Gaddafi's ouster and killing last year. Both men had been diplomats who defected and fought Gaddafi's regime while living in exile since the 1980s.

EGYPT

• Egyptian forces launched two offensives in the northern Sinai early Friday, security officials told the Ma'an news agency. They said an air campaign targeted areas outside the city of el-Arish, while other forces launched raids inside the city. A large number of soldiers and military vehicles have been employed to combat "terrorists" in the region, the security sources said.

