A firefight in which three soldiers and two civilians were killed erupted when security forces moved in to arrest an al-Qaida suspect in southeastern Yemen, the defense ministry said on Tuesday.

"Yemeni security forces arrested al-Qaida leader Mohammed Abdullah Maouda when he was on his way... with an armed group to Shabwa province Monday afternoon," governor of Marib province Ali Naji al-Zaidi told 26sep.net, the ministry's website.

Five bodies were found in a bank set ablaze in unrest that erupted in Morocco at the weekend after thousands of people demonstrated in several cities for change, the government said Monday.

Another 128 people, including 115 members of the security forces, were wounded in the violence that followed largely peaceful demonstrations Sunday to demand political reform, Interior Minister Taib Cherkaoui told reporters.

British Prime Minister David Cameron held talks in Cairo on Monday, on the first trip by a foreign leader to the Egyptian capital since the downfall of longtime president Hosni Mubarak.

Cameron held talks with Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi, the country's de facto leader since a popular uprising toppled Mubarak, the official MENA news agency reported.

Iraq scrambled to head off further protests on Monday by cutting politicians' pay and ramping up support for the needy after a teenage demonstrator was killed at a rally in the country's north.

Protests in recent weeks have taken place nationwide, in Iraq's Sunni, Shiite and Kurd areas, railing against corruption, high levels of unemployment and poor provision of basic services such as clean water and electricity.

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, in power since 1978, said on Monday that only defeat at the ballot box will make him quit, as he faced growing calls to step down.

"If they want me to quit, I will only leave through the ballot box," Saleh told a news conference as thousands of protesters, including opposition MPs, gathered outside Sanaa University to demand his departure.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir will not stand for reelection, an official at his National Congress Party said on Monday, while insisting he was "not under pressure" from the wave of protests rocking the Arab world.

"I can confirm, 100 percent, that Bashir is not going to run for president in the next election. He will actually give a chance to different personalities to compete for the position," Rabie Abdul Ati told Agence France Presse.

A car bomb detonated by a suicide attacker in the central Iraqi city of Samarra killed 10 policemen and wounded 16 others on Monday morning, police said.

The bomber rammed his explosives-packed vehicle into a compound for an emergency response unit which had been moved to the city to help with security for Shiite mourning rituals earlier this month, a police officer said.

Tunisia's interim government on Sunday asked Saudi Arabia to extradite deposed strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali as it faced a second day of protests demanding its resignation.

Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi's government made the official request to Riyadh, where Ben Ali fled on January 14 with his family after weeks of popular revolt against his 23-year regime, said a foreign ministry statement cited by state news agency TAP.

Anti-regime protests spread closer to the Libyan capital Sunday amid new fighting in the flashpoint city of Benghazi, as Human Rights Watch said it feared a catastrophe with more than 170 people dead in an iron-fisted crackdown.

As the death toll continued to rise, world leaders stepped up their pressure over strongman Moammar Gadhafi's response to the unprecedented challenge to his four-decade rule of the oil-rich North African country.

Hundreds of stateless Arabs demonstrated for the third day running on Sunday to press for basic rights and citizenship of the oil-rich Gulf state, an Agence France Presse photographer said.

Up to 300 protesters took to the streets in al-Jahraa, west of Kuwait City and around 200 demonstrated in Sulaibiya, south west of the capital, and the two protests remained peaceful unlike the previous two days.