The Iraqi parliament is investigating possible corruption in preparations for the Arab summit which Baghdad hosted in March at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, an MP said Saturday.

"We have indications that there was corruption (in the preparations for) the Arab summit and we need four to 10 weeks to complete our investigation," MP Bahaa al-Araji said in a statement.

Anti-U.S. Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Saturday accused the prime minister of having engineered the arrest of Iraq's electoral chief to serve his own purposes of staying in power.

Faraj al-Haidari, head of the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC), was detained on Thursday for alleged corruption along with another of the body's members, Karim al-Tamimi.

British airline Jet2.com said Saturday it has cancelled tickets for an unspecified number of passengers planning to attend a pro-Palestinian activist gathering after Israel raised objections.

The Guardian newspaper had reported that Jet2.com contacted three women passengers late Friday to inform them that their seats were cancelled on a flight to Tel Aviv scheduled to take off from Manchester, northern England, at 0900 GMT on Sunday.

Twelve people including four policemen were killed on Saturday in an attack by Al-Qaida-linked militants on a checkpoint in Yemen's southern port city of Aden, police said.

"Armed men from Al-Qaida attacked a security forces checkpoint at Jawala at the northern entrance to Aden, killing four police officers," a police source told AFP.

Germany said Saturday it was investigating the possible breaking of an arms embargo after a report claiming that a German ship had been carrying Iranian weapons bound for Syria.

The news weekly Der Spiegel reported Saturday on its website that a German shipping company stopped one of its vessels on the high seas after a tip-off from opponents of Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime.

Russia on Saturday said the U.N. Security Council had "practically agreed" a resolution on sending an observer mission to Syria and called on all sides to strictly obey the Kofi Annan peace plan.

"The resolution on the deployment into Syria of a U.N. monitoring mission advance group has been practically agreed for adoption at the U.N. Security Council," the Foreign Ministry said.

The U.N. Security Council will vote Saturday on a Western-drafted resolution allowing a ceasefire observer mission in Syria even though Russia's support is in doubt.

The United States called for the vote after a second day of wrangling with Russia over security guarantees for the first 30 unarmed military monitors who U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan wants in Syria early next week.

Syrian forces killed six people and shelled rebel areas of Homs on Saturday ahead of a U.N. Security Council vote on a Western-drafted resolution that would send observers to monitor a shaky truce now in its third day.

Forces loyal to President Bashar Assad killed four civilians as they opened fire at a funeral procession of a demonstrator in Aleppo, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

A Bahraini 15 year-old was in intensive care on Saturday after being shot by anti-riot police while attending the funeral of a citizen journalist killed during a protest late last month, the opposition said.

Mohammed Ahmed Abdel Aziz was among several people injured during the ceremony for Ahmed Ismail, 22, the main Shiite opposition movement in the Sunni-ruled kingdom, Al-Wefaq, said.

Amnesty International on Friday called for the release of a human rights activist who has reportedly been on hunger strike in a Saudi jail for five weeks.

Mohammed bin Saleh al-Bajadi, co-founder of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA), has reportedly refused to take water since last weekend, it said in a statement.