Here's a summary of today's events:

Syria

• Turkey has warned it will act to protect itself if Syria's crackdown on protesters threatens regional security and a refugee crisis. Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu said: "Turkey has no desire to interfere in anyone's internal affairs. But if a risk to regional security arises, then we do not have the luxury of standing by and looking on."

• Activists claim 35 people were killed as the security services attempted to prevent Friday protest in many parts of the country. Some protesters expressed support for a campaign civil disobedience, dubbed strikes for dignity, which is due to begin on Sunday.

• The city of Homs witnessed the worst of the violence with 18 deaths. The opposition Syrian National Council claimed the Army is preparing to launch an onslaught against the city in an attempt to crush the centre of the uprising.

• More than 5,000 people have been killed in Syria since the uprising began in March, according to a tally by activists which is believed to be used by the United Nations. The estimate by the Violation Documentation Centre, includes 310 children and 910 soldiers.

• The UN's deputy humanitarian chief Valerie Amos said the international community couldn't establish buffer zones in Syria, because it doesn't know where to set them up. She appealed again to the Syrian authorities to UN unfettered assess the scale of the crisis. The International Committee of the Red Cross said the humanitarian situation in Syria is serious but the country has not yet descended into civil war.

• Syrian cartoonist Ali Ferzat, who was beaten by the security forces in August, has been named reporter of the year, by Reporters Without Borders and Le Monde. President Bashar al-Assad claimed this week to have no knowledge of his case.

• The Arab League has asked Syria's ally Iraq to try to persuade Damascus to sign a deal that would grant monitors unfettered access in Syria. League general secretary Nabil al-Arabi said: "The ball is in the Syrian court, they can come and sign at any time and then perhaps the observers will be there perhaps in 24 hours."

Libya

• The new Libyan authorities are making it difficult for journalists to report on the post-Gaddafi era by restricting media visa, journalists have complained. The National Transitional Council acknowledged the problem amid mounting media frustration at the lack of access.

Yemen

• A prison riot in the capital Sanaa left two inmates dead and three guards injured. A prison protest at poor treatment turned violent after police tried to disperse the crowd by using water cannons and tear gas.

Doves or pigeons were released at a big demonstration Deir Balba in Homs province.

The blog Enduring America says they symbolize freedom.

In the city of Homs an activist shows how dodge sniper fire.

The number of people killed in the city has increased to 18 today, according to the LCCS. It says 32 people have been killed nationwide today.

Today's death toll in Syria appears to be rising ominously fast. According to the latest update from the Local Coordination Committee of Syria 29 people have died so far today, including six children.

Two people were killed in the Damascus suburbs of Saqba and Douma.

Video footage from another suburb of the capital, Qabon, shows a heavy security presence.

More than 5,000 people have been killed in Syria since the uprising began, according to a tally by activists which is believed to be used by the United Nations.

The Violation Documentation Centre, a website maintained by activists aimed at counting and identifying the dead, reports that 5,008 people have been killed in the violence since March.

Last week the UN high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, suggested that that UN was using the VDC for its estimates of the death toll in Syria.

At the start of week she warned that 4,000 people and probably "much more" had been killed in uprising. She updated journalists last Friday to say that 310 children were among the total - a figure that matched the VDC's tally at the time.

The number of children killed has since increased to 340, according to the VDC.

There has also been a sharp rise in the number of troops killed from 843 this time last week to 910 today.

Syrian actor Fadwa Sulaiman has been filmed leading a demonstration in Homs, al-Jazeera's Evan Hill has spotted.

In a video message last month Sulaiman said:

I urge the great Syrian people to continue their peaceful struggle until they topple the regime and achieve the democratic civic state that all Syrians dream of. And I invite you to unite and stand together to overthrow the regime which lost its legitimacy the moment the constitution was changed to accommodate the appointment of Bashar Al-Assad as president of Syria, for no reason other than being the son of the late president.

Her appearance in today's clip suggests she has abandoned a hunger strike and felt safe enough in Homs to come out of hiding.

The UN's humanitarian deputy chief Valerie Amos said the international community couldn't set up buffer zones in Syria, because it doesn't know where to set them up.

"If we don't know where the needs are, where are we going to set up possible humanitarian corridors or buffer zones?" she told reporters in Stockholm.

She again urged the Syria government to grant humanitarian access to the country.

I repeat my call to the Syrian government to really let us in. We are concerned about the health impact of what is going on. We don't have a very clear picture across the country because we do not have the access that will enable us to know exactly what is going on. If, as the government say, they have nothing to hide, then I think allowing us in to see that that is the case and to do a proper assessment of what the implications of this are for the people of Syria is absolutely critical.

Activists claim 15 people have been killed so far today in Syria, including four children, two women and four defected soldiers.

Seven people have killed in Homs, according to the Local Coordination Committee of Syria.

Such a figures have become grimly typical over the last few weeks. There has been so sign yet of a massacre in Homs , as the Syrian National Council feared.

Pockets of protests have continued in the city despite reports of troops and tanks surrounding Homs.

Despite the continuing crackdown protests have taken place across Syria today.

This was the scene in Anadan, Aleppo and Zabadani near Damascus. In Kafranbel, Idlib protesters held up a placards of Assad as the Godfather.

In this demonstration in Ma'arrat an Numaan, protesters held a banner in English which read: "All the massacres in the world doesn't compare with Assad's one".

A second banner appears to be an appeal to the UN's security council. "We ask to move the Syrian file to the security commission," it says.

Three children have been killed in Homs today, an activist and resident of the city told the Guardian.

Omar [not his real name] spoke to my colleague Mona Mahmood via Skype above the sound of gun fire.

He said: "The plan was to go an anti-regime demonstration after Friday prayers. But we were stopped by snipers at checkpoints. They were shooting anyone in the streets. So we decided to go to via alleys to avoid the shooting."

He said the heaviest gunfire was in the districts of Khalediya and Bayada.

Omar said three have been killed today including 10-year-old Maher Al-Hussain in Bab Sebaa and 12-year-old Mohammed Nassar. Both were killed by cross fire from snipers he said. A third child was shot in al-Houleh, he said.

The army continues to bombard the city with sound bombs and nail bombs, he claimed.

Omar, who was put in touch with the Guardian by the campaign Avaas, also described how the city is suffering from shortages of fuel, medication and power cuts. He said he knew of two women who died because of lack of medication. One had diabetes, the other kidney failure.

The price of infant milk formula had risen by 80%, he claimed.

Many of the flats in the city lack water because power cuts mean there is no electricity to pump it to the higher floors. Omar said he had to store bottled water on his balcony.

The city is in open revolt, Omar claimed. He said three quarters of the city's

schools and universities were closed and civil servants were on strike twice a week.

There were chants calling for the execution of president Assad today, he said.

But added: "We want to prove to the regime that our revolution is peaceful."

He said the five provinces Deraa, Idlib, Dier Ezzor, Homs, and Hama as well as some Damascus suburbs, were prepared to support a new campaign of civil mutiny beginning on Sunday.

The new Libyan authorities are making it difficult for journalists to report on the post-Gaddafi era by restricting media visa, journalists have complained.

Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch, said the National Transitional Council has suspended a system which granted reporters entry to the country if they had letter from the NTC's media centre..

He complained that the new restrictions were a "nasty" hangover from the Gaddafi era.

Writing on a Facebook group for foreign correspondents set up by Bouckaert, the Guardian's Libya stringer Christopher Stephen wrote:

I spoke to the BBC and it is also their understanding that no more press visas will be issued as policy, with some exceptions made. One piece of advice was to come in on a business visa but this seems to me to be a non starter, because as soon as you write a story that meets official disapproval you will be reminded that you came in on a false visa. The NTC press office is closed, more or less permanently.

The NTC's deputy head of the media centre acknowledged the problem. In a posting on the group, he wrote: "As all know things here are very slow and with the new gov[ernment] still in limbo it is proving problematic to get anywhere. But I will be persistent.

Bouckaert replied:

What would be most useful is for the NTC to send a general instruction to embassies to provide visas for journalists and NGO workers, UN workers, and humanitarians who present their credentials at the embassy. The requirement to get approval from Tripoli is a nasty holdover from the Gaddafi era, and should be gotten rid off. There is no reason to require approval from Tripoli for accredited persons, and it just creates more work for you all. Happy journalists are an asset to the new Libya, and should be welcomed.

Syrian cartoonist Ali Ferzat, who was beaten by the security forces in August, has been named reporter of the year, by Reporters Without Borders and Le Monde.

As Enduring America notes the Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Jean-François Julliard said:



This year we are honouring a courageous journalist who has been the victim of brutal repression by an obsolete government Ali Ferzat fully deserves this award. His cartoons target the abuses of a desperate regime with its back to the wall and encourage Syrians to demand their rights and to express themselves freely.

The Egyptian photographer ghazalairshad produced this Flickr gallery of Cairo exhibition of Ferzat's work and cartoonists response to his treatment.

President Assad was asked about Ferzat in his interview with ABC's Barbara Walters. He denied knowledge of the case. Here's the transcript.

Walters: The cartoonist who was critical of you, I have seen his pictures, his hands were broken, he was beaten. Assad: Many people criticize me, did they kill all of them, who killed who, most of the people that have been killed are supporters of the government not the vice versa. Walters: But in the beginning, what about the singer with his throat cut? Assad: I don't know about him, I don't know about every single case.

Activists claim the Free Syrian Army [FSA] destroyed one of the army tanks circling around Homs.

Footage of the incident from yesterday shows what appears to be a smouldering military vehicle in the city.

A report by the Local Coordination Committees of Syria, a group that publicises protests, said the FSA was protecting civilians in the city with "light weapons".

The humanitarian situation in Syria is serious but the country has not yet descended into civil war, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Reuters reports:

ICRC President Jakob Kellenberger said the independent agency would not visit any more Syrian prisons until authorities fully accepted its terms but talks continued following its first ever visit to a Damascus detention centre in September. Asked whether the situation in Syria now counted as a civil war under international law, Kellenberger told a news conference "No, not yet. I'm in discussion with our legal people and I think they feel it does not yet qualify according to our criteria." "But ... the qualification as such does not say much about the humanitarian suffering in a specific situation. It is an extremely serious humanitarian situation. "So the fact that we have not yet qualified it as such is not a specific judgment on what we feel about the violence and its humanitarian consequences. It remains an issue basically because of one of the criteria -- that is that of organization."

On the diplomatic front, France, Britain and Germany have called for UN Human Rights chief Navi Pillay to brief the UN security council on Syria's crackdown.

Al-Jazeera reports:

Diplomats from the three countries said they were ready to force a vote on the move at the 15-member council if a briefing was not agreed by consensus. A final decision on Pillay's briefing will be made on Friday and the UN Human Rights commissioner could appear before the council next Tuesday, diplomats said.

The Arab League has asked Syria's ally Iraq to try to persuade Damascus to agree sign a deal that would grant monitors unfettered access in Syria.

China Daily quoted League general secretary Nabil al-Arabi (pictured) as saying: "The ball is in the Syrian court, they can come and sign (the initiative) at any time and then perhaps the observers will be there perhaps in 24 hours ... if they want to stop the economic sanctions, they (have to) sign"

There is mounting concern about what is about to occur in Homs.

Syrian blogger Maysaloon tweeted:

I think we're either going to see a massacre in Homs, or a war involving #Syria at some point. This situation cannot last for long.

The Local Coordination Committee of Syria reported "intensive fire" in the north east district Khalediya and Bayada districts.

This map of protests areas in Homs is useful.

The most cited source on events in Syria lives in a terraced house in Coventry where he combines monitoring the Assad regime's brutal crackdown with running a clothing business, Reuters reports.

It has fascinating profile of Rami Abdulrahman founder of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights:

With only a few hours sleep, a phone glued to his ear and another two ringing, the fast-talking director of arguably Syria's most high-profile human rights group is a very busy man. "Are there clashes? How did he die? Ah, he was shot," said Rami Abdulrahman into a phone, the talk of gunfire and death incongruous with his two bedroom terraced home in Coventry, from where he runs the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. When he isn't fielding calls from international media, Abdulrahman is a few minutes down the road at his clothes shop, which he runs with his wife. Cited by virtually every major news outlet since an uprising against the iron rule of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad began in March, the observatory has been a key source of news on the events in Syria. Most foreign media have been banned from reporting in Syria. "The calls come 24 hours a day, you've seen how many I've had in the last hour," Abdulrahman, 40, told Reuters as he answered reporters' calls, as well as calls from his network of sources in Syria. "My job, my clothing business, my nerves have all been affected due to the pressure. Some nights I only get three hours sleep," he said.

Welcome to Middle East Live. The central Syrian city of Homs is the focus today as the opposition fears the army is about to launch an assault on the city in an attempt to snuff out the uprising.

Here's a round up of the latest developments:

Syria

• The Syrian army has surrounded Homs and is preparing to launch a "massacre" according to a warning from the opposition Syrian National Council. In a press statement it said:

Evidence received from reports, videos and information obtained by activists on the ground in Homs, indicate that the regime paving the way to commit a massacre in order to extinguish the Revolution in Homs and to discipline by example, other Syrian cities that have joined the Revolution.

It claimed that yesterday's attack on oil pipeline on the outskirts of Homs is being used as pretext for the assault.

• A series of videos from activists show tanks mobilising in and around the city, dissident Ammar Abdulhamid notes.

In a blogpost headline "Prelude to Mayhem" Abdulahamid warns:

Unless world leaders make up their mind and decide that intervention to prevent a crisis is better than intervention to manage, the powder keg that is today's Syria will surely blow and soon.

• Soldiers and activists close to the rebel Free Syrian Army are frustrated by the defensive tactics adopted by the group after talks with the opposition Syrian National Council, according to the New York Times. Abdulsatar Maksur, who helps supply the renegade troops, said: helping to coordinate the Free Syrian Army's supply network, said:

We don't like their strategy. They just talk and are interested in politics, while the Assad regime is slaughtering our people. We favor more aggressive military action.

• Former Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri says he "openly and proudly" supports the uprising of the Syrian people, after Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah repeated his support for the Syrian regime. "If Hezbollah openly supports the Syrian regime, we openly and proudly support the Syrian revolution and the Syrian people," Hariri told his Twitter followers, Lebanon's Daily Star reports.

Egypt

• Egypt's new parliament is on course to have no female representatives because the electoral system made it very difficult for women to win, argues Mara Revkin in Foreign Policy magazine. She writes:

At face value, the requirement that each party include a woman on its list looks like a step toward leveling the playing field. But in reality, forcing parties to nominate women has done no favors for female candidates. Parties have dealt with the gender requirement by relegating women to the least desirable slots at the bottom of their candidate lists. When Salafi parties were required to include women on their candidate lists, they made sure that the candidates' faces were replaced with flowers on campaign materials, because displaying photos of women in public was deemed inappropriate. If the Salafis are already censoring posters, their parliamentarians aren't likely to look favorably on the participation of women in public and political life.

• The Muslim Brotherhood is to boycott an advisory council in protest at the ruling general's decision to give the body the final say on writing the country's new constitution. The Brotherhood accused the generals of trying to undercut the authority of the elected representatives before the house had been fully elected.

• At a press conference on Wednesday General Mukhtar al-Mulla said the council would have the final say because the parliament would not be representative. You can listen to a two hour and ten minute recording of the press conference courtesy of the New York Times.

• The generals don't have the competence, leadership or the "will to power" to rule, argues Issandr El Amrani on his Arabist blog. He makes these points about Scaf's press conference:

• The oddness of making this important statement — the drawing of a red line — to foreigners rather than Egyptian politicians or even the Egyptian public • That the Scaf has chosen to make this statement indirectly suggests it does not feel confident for a direct confrontation (as over the "supra-constitutional principles") and prefers sending signals at this state • That this is happening as the new government and its "council of advisors" is being composed, with this council being given powers to guide the appointment of the members of the constituent assembly (a further distancing of Scaf from direct implication in this issue after the failure of the "principles") • The nonsensical nature of what was said — particularly the idea that the elected parliament does not represent Egyptian society, with the implication that the unelected Scaf does represent that society • The duelling constitutional challenges of the next few months: on the one hand, parliament seems to have the right to appoint the constituent assembly, but SCAF wants to guide the process; and on the other, SCAF seems to have the right to appoint the government, but the incoming parliament (and Tahrir) want to have a voice in that

Bahrain

• There are growing doubts about the Kingdom's commitment to implement reforms set out by an independent inquiry into the government's handling of the uprising, the BBC reports. Opposition figures dismiss as "window dressing" a committee set up to implement the reforms.

• The Arab Studies Institute's Jadaliyya website claims the original inquiry's recommendations did not match the severity of what it discovered.

For government loyalists, the report was like a bucket of cold water. It effectively told them that they had been lied to. The government's narrative was largely debunked: there was no Iranian involvement, the demonstrations were peaceful, the demands of the opposition are legitimate and did not call for an Islamic republic, military tribunals were wrong, and yes, there was not just systematic but systemic torture. Yet the report adopted the government narrative in some parts, particularly in the chapter about the raids at Salmaniya Hospital and the one about the crackdown at the University of Bahrain, two of the most contentious events.

Iran

• Iran's Revolutionary Guard have displayed an aircraft that they claimed was a US drone brought down over Iranian airspace. They said on Thursday it was downed by electronic means. The US conceded it lost a drone based in western Afghanistan, which American newspaper reports said was part of a intensive surveillance campaign aimed at detecting a covert Iranian nuclear weapons programme. But weapons experts questioned the authenticity of the aircraft put on show by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.