Security forces shot dead two protesters in the western city of Hudaydah during demonstrations that broke out overnight after bloody protests elsewhere in Yemen left 17 dead, witnesses said Tuesday.

Thousands of protesters took to the street in the Red Sea city denouncing the killing of 17 anti-regime protesters Monday in the city of Taez, 200 kilometers south of the capital Sanaa.

The Libyan government said Tuesday it was ready to negotiate reforms, but refused any talk of Moammar Gadhafi stepping down saying he was a unifying figure after ruling the nation for four decades.

"What kind of political system is implemented in the country? This is negotiable, we can talk about it," government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim told journalists. "We can have anything, elections, and referendums."

The commission charged with replacing Syria's emergency law with new legislation will conclude its work by Friday, a newspaper close to the government reported.

"Sources within the commission tasked with studying the removal of the emergency law said it will, by Friday, finish formulating the necessary legislation to replace the emergency law," the Al-Watan newspaper said Monday.

Eight prisoners died and 17 were injured in a jail blaze Monday in the flashpoint Syrian town of Latakia started when an inmate torched his mattress, police cited by the state SANA news agency said.

"Twenty-five prisoners were hospitalized, eight of whom died of asphyxiation and serious burn injuries," said Latakia police chief General Kamal Fteih.

A new governor has been sworn in for a Syrian province that has become the epicenter for the country's anti-government protests.

The state-run news agency SANA says Mohammed Khaled Hannous was sworn in as governor of Daraa on Monday.

Yemeni security forces shot dead 15 anti-regime demonstrators and wounded scores more on Monday, on the second day of lethal clashes in Taez, south of the capital, medics said.

"The death toll has gone up to 15," said Sadeq al-Shujaa, head of a makeshift field hospital at a square in central Taez, updating an earlier casualty toll.

A blinding dust storm hit Kuwait on Monday forcing a halt in oil exports which an official said would not affect commitments to clients, while air traffic was completely halted.

A spokesman for Kuwait National Petroleum Co (KNPC) said oil exports were stopped and would resume when weather conditions improve.

The Libyan rebels' Transitional National Council on Monday rejected any transition under Moammar Gadhafi's sons after The New York Times reported that two of them had proposed that.

"This is completely rejected by the council," its spokesman Shamseddin Abdulmelah said in the rebels' stronghold in the eastern city of Benghazi.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a telephone conversation has asked the U.N. chief to stop U.S. and Europe "intervention" in the region, the website of his office reported on Monday.

"The intervention of some European countries and America in the regional nations increases concern and makes circumstances more complicated," Ahmadinejad was quoted as telling U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

The Israeli army on Monday deployed a second battery of its Iron Dome short-range missile defense system, this time around the southern port city of Ashkelon, a military spokeswoman said.

"This battery was deployed around Ashkelon for security reasons, this is the second system to become operational after the deployment around Beersheva," she said, without giving further details.