Tribesmen and al-Qaida militants killed 22 people, all but two of them soldiers, and captured dozens of others in separate attacks over a 24-hour period, security and tribal sources said on Friday.

"Al-Qaida militants ambushed a military patrol near Safer (oil fields), in (the eastern province of) Marib, killing 11 soldiers," a security official in Sanaa said. The assailants used machine-guns in Friday's attack.

Egypt's state prosecutor has renewed the detention of ousted leader Hosni Mubarak for another 15 days amid a probe into a deadly crackdown on protesters and corruption, MENA news agency said Friday.

Mubarak, who was forced to resign in February after mass protests, was first remanded into preventive custody for 15 days on April 13 on suspicion of involvement in a deadly crackdown on protesters and corruption.

Jordan has detained 136 people on "terrorism" charges a week after scores were hurt when Islamist Salafist protesters clashed with police in the northern city of Zarqa, a police spokesman said on Friday.

"The involvement of 136 people brought before the prosecutor of the State Security Court for terrorism and unrest has been proven, and it was decided to detain them," spokesman Mohammad Khatib said, quoted by Petra news agency.

Syrian President Bashar Assad must "do more, or allow others to do more" if he is going to satisfy the reform demands of the Syrian people, a U.S. State Department spokesman said Thursday.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner was responding to questions about comments from former Syrian vice president Abdel Halim Khaddam, who told an Egyptian newspaper that Assad's crackdown on demonstrators will eventually lead to the Syrian leader's ouster.

Senior U.S. Senator John McCain paid a visit to the Libyan rebel headquarters in their eastern stronghold city of Benghazi on Friday, an Agence France Presse correspondent said.

McCain was mobbed on arrival at the courthouse in the center of the city by a crowd of about 50 people, who chanted, "Libya free, Gadhafi go away -- thank you America, thank you Obama."

Libyan rebels Thursday overran a post on the Tunisian border, marking their first advance in weeks against Moammar Gadhafi's forces as NATO warned civilians to stand clear of its bombing blitz.

The capture of the Wazin border post was cheered by several hundred rebels who raised the flag of the Libyan monarchy after some 150 to 200 pro-Gadhafi soldiers abandoned their weapons and fled into Tunisia.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad signed a decree to lift almost five decades of draconian emergency rule on Thursday, as a protest movement that has rocked his regime called further demonstrations.

Assad, who has been in power since he replaced his father 11 years ago, issued the order to scrap the state of emergency along with separate decrees to abolish the state security court and to allow citizens to protest peacefully.

Iraq's High Criminal Court sentenced to death three Saddam Hussein-era spies on Thursday. The spies assassinated the father of a sitting Iraqi lawmaker in Beirut in April 1994, Agence France Presse said.

"The court sentences to death Hadi Hassuni, Abdul Hassan al-Majid and Farukh Hijazi, who were agents of the intelligence services," tribunal spokesman Mohammed Abdul Saheb told AFP.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday warned against a Western ground operation in Libya, saying it would be an "extremely risky" action with unpredictable consequences.

Speaking in the Slovenian capital Ljubljana, Lavrov said that Russia was worried by signs of a move towards a ground conflict involving Western forces in Libya.

Syrian soldiers and armed security agents in plainclothes deployed across the tense central city of Homs on Thursday, taking up positions in the area on the eve of large rallies planned by Syrian anti-government activists, eyewitnesses said.

The deployment came as the Syrian president appointed a new governor for Homs after having caved in to protesters' demands to replace its top local official earlier this month.