Israel will not apologize to Turkey for a deadly May 2010 raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla and will not lift its blockade on the Gaza Strip, an Israeli minister insisted on Wednesday, as ties with Ankara sank to new lows.

"Israel defends its interests and its government will not apologize," said Israel Katz, Israel's transport minister and a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party.

Iranian security forces have arrested five al-Qaida members who were trying to smuggle explosives and weapons into the Islamic republic, a provincial police commander said on Tuesday.

"Five people of the terrorist al-Qaida group have been arrested in (the southern) Kerman province," Brigadier General Hossein Chenarian, the provincial commander, was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.

The president of north Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region called on Tuesday for U.S. forces to stay in Iraq past 2011 to avoid a civil war, accusing Iraqi leaders of hypocrisy on the divisive issue.

"We think that the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq is still needed, and all the political blocs say this during bilateral meetings, but when they stand behind the microphone they say something else," Massud Barzani said during a meeting in Arbil with Kurdistan representatives based abroad.

Libya's new authorities resumed talks on Tuesday with local leaders in Bani Walid, one of the last bastions of Moammar Gadhafi, bidding to end a tense standoff over the oasis town.

Negotiations for the peaceful surrender of Bani Walid, which anti-Gadhafi fighters encircled last week, had collapsed Sunday, and the latest talks were aimed at reassuring Warfalla tribesmen, elders and the local community.

A planned visit to Damascus Wednesday by Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi in which he had been due to press the bloc's calls for reform has been postponed, diplomatic sources said.

"The visit has been put off to an undetermined date at Syria's request and a new meeting will be arranged soon," one diplomatic source told Agence France Presse on Tuesday.

A large convoy of civilian and military vehicles from Libya crossed into Niger but officials denied Tuesday that Libya's toppled leader Moammar Gadhafi was aboard.

The convoy entered the Sahelian country late Monday and drove through the city of Agadez, a stronghold of the former Tuareg rebellion Gadhafi once supported, a local military source said on condition of anonymity.

Syrian security forces killed two people, including a teenager, and another five bodies were found in the flashpoint central province of Homs on Tuesday, activists said.

"Two people died and two were wounded by gunfire south of the industrial town of Rastan" near Homs, where they were employed, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told Agence France Presse, adding one of those killed was aged 15.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced a total freeze on military and trade ties with Israel and threatened Tuesday to visit Gaza as the one-time allies' diplomatic spat intensified.

Only hours after Israel said the continued presence of its defense attache at the embassy in Ankara indicated there was no definitive break with Turkey, Erdogan declared a suspension to all military and commercial relations.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the world community on Tuesday to take action on the situation in Syria.

While Ban stopped short of calling for military intervention, he delivered some of his strongest statements yet condemning the violence he says Syrian President Bashar Assad is perpetrating against his people. Ban said it is time for U.N. member nations to unite and take "coherent measures."

Israeli war planes bombed an alleged weapons manufacturing site in the central Gaza Strip overnight after a rocket was fired from the Palestinian territory, Israel's army said on Tuesday.

The rocket landed in southern Israel but caused no damage or injuries, the army said. There were no immediate reports from Gaza of injuries from the Israeli strike.