9.17am BST

Welcome to Middle East Live. The crisis in Syria and the continuing protests over the anti-Islamic film look likely to be the two main stories to watch today. It is difficult to know which way the film protests will go. The Daily Telegraph says the protests are spreading; the New York Times says they are tapering off.

Here's a summary of the latest developments

Syria

• Iran is proposing that it, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey dispatch observers to Syria in an effort to quell the violence there, according to the French news agency AFP, citing state media. The Iranian foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, put forward the suggestion at a contact group meeting hosted by Egypt.

• Saudi Arabia stayed away from the Cairo talks. The contact group decided to meet again in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

• The Syrian army is believed to have tested firing systems for chemical weapons at the end of August, according to the German magazine Der Spiegel, citing witness reports.

The tests took place near a chemical weapons research center at Safira, east of Aleppo, witnesses told Spiegel. A total of five or six empty shells devised for delivering chemical agents were fired by tanks and aircraft, at a site called Diraiham in the desert near the village of Khanasir.

Protests over anti-Islam film

Afghanistan

• A suicide attack on a minibus in Kabul killed 12 people on Tuesday, including seven foreigners. The Hezb-e-Islami insurgent group claimed responsibility, saying the blast was in retaliation for the film Innocence of Muslims, which supposedly mocks the prophet Muhammad. "A woman wearing a suicide vest blew herself up in response to the anti-Islam video," said Zubair Sediqqi, a spokesman for the militant faction, which does not usually carry out such attacks.

Lebanon

• Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanon's powerful Hezbollah movement, made a rare public appearance to lead an anti-US demonstration against the film. Speaking at a rally in the southern Shia suburbs of Beirut, he said: "The US should understand that if it broadcasts the film in full it will face very dangerous repercussions around the world." Reflecting nervousness about the protests in the region, the US embassy in Beirut has started to destroy classified material as a security precaution, the Associated Press reports.

Tunisia

• Police surrounded a mosque in the capital, Tunis, where a Salafi leader was meeting followers. Sheikh Saif-Allah Benhassine is wanted by police over clashes at the US embassy last week, but he managed to slip past the cordon and escape.

Libya

• The Islamist brigade suspected of involvement in the death of the US ambassador, Chris Stevens, in Benghazi last week said America was to blame for allowing the release of the film. Speaking to the Guardian, Youssef el-Gehani, spokesman of the Ansar al-Sharia brigade, said: "We categorically deny we were there. American policies target some of the most sacred elements of our religion so you should expect a reaction. The embassy [US consulate] knew how sensitive it was to have that film. They should have evacuated the embassy."

Pakistan

• The prime minister, Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, ordered the suspension of YouTube over the "blasphemous" film after demonstrations turned violent. Two protesters were killed as police used teargas and fired into the air to control crowds, which have grown since last week. Thousands of people shouting anti-American slogans took to the streets in Peshawar, Lahore, and, for a second day, in Karachi.

Iran

• A state-run institute has increased the bounty on the head of the British author Salman Rushdie, and claimed the controversy over the film would not have occurred if he had been killed. Hassan Sanei, the head of 15 Khordad, said: "Surely if the sentence of the Imam [Ayatollah Khomeini] had been carried out, the later insults in the form of caricatures, articles and the making of movies would not have occurred."

'Muslim Rage'

• The Somali born writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali says the protests are a setback for the Arab spring but they will fade, together with the power of newly elected Islamist governments. In an article for Newsweek and the Daily Beast she wrote:

Utopian ideologies have a short lifespan. Some are bloodier than others. As long as Islamists were able to market their philosophy as the only alternative to dictatorship and foreign meddling, they were attractive to an oppressed polity. But with their election to office they will be subjected to the test of government. It is clear, as we saw in Iran in 2009 and elsewhere, that if the philosophy of the Islamists is fully and forcefully implemented, those who elected them will end up disillusioned.

A provocative cover by Newsweek for Ali's article and attempts by its editors to discuss the issue under the Twitter hashtag #MuslimRage, has been widely mocked, the New York Times reports. Gawker joined in the mockery.

Bahrain

• Seven police lieutenants have been charged with alleged abuses against suspected anti-government protesters, including using torture to obtain confessions that were later thrown out in court, AP reports. The allegations mark the most sweeping action so far against security forces since a widely condemned crackdown against anti-government protests, which started in February 2011.

Morocco

• Five pro-reform activists have been sentenced to up to 10 months in prison after they claimed they had been tortured into making false confessions, according to Human Rights Watch. The rights group expressed concern about the fairness of the trial.