Riot police stormed through a Manama Square in the dark early Thursday firing rubber bullets and tear gas in a harsh crackdown on anti-regime protesters that left four dead, witnesses and opposition said.

Up to 95 protesters were wounded when police launched the operation in the iconic Pearl Square without warning at around 3.00 am (midnight GMT), sending protesters fleeing in panic, they said.

Three Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli troops early on Thursday in an area near Gaza's northern border with Israel, officials on both sides said.

Adham Abu Selmiya, a spokesman for the Hamas-run emergency services, said the men died after being hit by a tank shell and machine gun fire in an area called Al-Waha which lies close to both the shore and the northern border with Israel.

Algeria said Wednesday it will lift by the end of February the state of emergency slapped on the country 19 years ago at the start of a decade-long bloody conflict with Islamist militants.

"The lifting of the state of emergency will take place before the end of the current month along with the announcement of several measures regarding housing, jobs and administration management," the state news agency APS quoted Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia as saying.

Iran is sending two warships into the Mediterranean Sea, Israel's foreign minister said Wednesday, labeling the act a "provocation" the Jewish state cannot ignore for long.

"Tonight two Iranian warships are supposed to cross the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean Sea on their way to Syria," Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said, speaking at a conference of American Jewish leaders in Jerusalem.

Anti-regime protesters and supporters of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh armed with daggers clashed in Sanaa on Wednesday, with at least four people wounded, an Agence France Presse correspondent reported.

Three journalists were also beaten up by Saleh supporters in the clashes near Sanaa University between students demanding the president's ouster and supporters of his ruling General People's Congress (GPC).

Clashes erupted Wednesday between regime backers and "apparent" supporters of Iran's opposition at a funeral in Tehran of a student killed in anti-government protests, state television reported.

"Students and people participating in the funeral of martyr Sane'e Zhale in Tehran Fine Arts University are clashing with a few apparently from the sedition movement," the television website said.

14 people were injured in clashes in the Libyan city of Benghazi, a Libyan newspaper reported Wednesday.

the BBC had earlier quoted eyewitnesses as saying that Benghazi was "rocked by protests."

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday that the "enemies" who planned the anti-government protests in Tehran on Monday will fail to achieve their goals.

"It is evident and clear that the Iranian nation has enemies because it is a country which wants to shine and achieve its peak and wants to change relations (between countries) in the world," Ahmadinejad said in a live interview on state television.

U.S. President Barack Obama Tuesday warned autocratic U.S. allies they cannot crush the Middle East's youthful "hunger" for change and offered "moral support" to Iranian protesters defying a crackdown.

Obama walked a fine line between offering American support for political uprisings after the Egypt revolt and openly offending states that use iron-fisted rule yet have guaranteed U.S. interests for decades.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday warned the West it was "counter-productive" to encourage the spread of revolutions in the Middle East after fresh protests convulsed the Arab world.

Asked whether he thought the United States had been encouraging the uprisings, Lavrov called for any tensions to be resolved through peaceful agreement and warned against imposing democracy.