Yemen's future president Abdrabuh Mansour Hadi has pledged to southern separatists and northern rebels that he will address their concerns, as fears mounted over election boycotts and escalating vote-related violence.

Both the separatist Southern Movement and the northern Shiite rebels are boycotting Tuesday's presidential vote, and attacks on polling stations and clashes between troops and anti-election protesters in the south have raised fears that polling day could be marred by violence.

Iraq's fugitive Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi said his bodyguards and other employees are being held in secret prisons and subjected to torture, in an interview broadcast on Monday.

Authorities have charged Hashemi, a Sunni, with running a death squad. He has been hiding out since December in the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, where the authorities have so far declined to hand him over.

Syria's opposition is expected to take part in an international conference in Tunis on Friday to which European Union and Arab League members as well as China, Russia and United States have been invited.

Speaking after a meeting of Mediterranean region foreign ministers in Rome on Monday, Tunisian Foreign Minister Rafik Abdessalem also said the talks had agreed on the need to avoid "an Iraqi scenario" and preserve Syria's integrity.

Two Iranian warships have docked at the Syrian port of Tartus, state television reported on Monday, adding that their crew would be training Syrian sailors.

"The two ships, one which is a supply vessel and the other a destroyer have docked in Tartus, a port city north west of Damascus, and as per a bilateral agreement they will be involved in training the Syrian navy," the report said, without indicating when the vessels went into port.

Algeria has uncovered a large cache of weapons believed to originate from Libya, including dozens of shoulder-held missiles that can be used to shoot down airliners, newspapers said Monday.

According to the French-speaking el-Watan, 15 SA-24 and 28 SAM-7 Russian-made man-portable surface-to-air missiles were found at a location in the southern desert called In Amenas.

The Syrian authorities have freed blogger Razan Ghazzawi, symbol of an 11-month uprising, and six other female activists arrested last week, a human rights lawyer said on Monday.

The women were released on Saturday, but were ordered to report to police daily in order to continue their questioning, the lawyer, Anwar Bunni, told Agence France Presse.

Western support for Syrian rebels could trigger civil war in the violence-hit nation, an influential Chinese newspaper said Monday, as it defended Beijing's decision to veto a U.N. resolution.

The U.N. Security Council resolution, which condemned a crackdown on protesters by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, would have cornered Damascus and led to worse violence, said a front-page commentary in the People's Daily.

Activists fear an all-out assault Monday on Homs, with Syria's embattled regime building up troops around the flashpoint city and activating a security alert in Damascus after surprise protests.

The reported buildup comes as the top U.S. military officer, General Martin Dempsey, warned any intervention in Syria would be "very difficult" and that it was "premature" to arm the unrest-swept country's opposition movement.

Attackers daubed death threats on the walls of the Baptist House church in central Jerusalem overnight and vandalized three cars parked nearby in the latest "price tag" hate crime, police said on Monday.

"Anti-Christian graffiti was found on the walls of the Baptist church and the tyres of three cars parked nearby were slashed," said police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld of the church which is located on Narkis Street in west Jerusalem.

A court has sentenced a Kuwaiti couple to death for beating and then murdering their Filipina domestic helper, newspapers in the Gulf state reported on Monday.

The criminal court found the disabled husband and his wife guilty of "premeditated murder" after throwing the maid from their car and driving over her, al-Rai and al-Anbaa dailies reported, citing the verdict.