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.

Gulf Arab monarchies including Saudi Arabia denounced Iran's "flagrant interference" in regional affairs and said Tehran was destabilizing their countries, at a ministerial meeting overnight Saturday.

Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) foreign ministers said in a statement they were "deeply worried about continuing Iranian meddling" in their region.

About 4,000 people demonstrated in Morocco's biggest city Casablanca Sunday to demand more democracy and reform, an Agence France Presse reporter said, in the latest in a wave of protests.

Police said about 2,500 people took part in the demonstrations while organizers put the figure at 10,000.

The oil town of Brega saw heavy fighting on Sunday as rebel forces advanced only to fall back again after being ambushed by forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi, who was hit by another defection.

Former foreign minister and U.N. General Assembly president Ali Treiki became the latest official to abandon Gadhafi, after the flight to Britain of foreign minister and regime stalwart Moussa Koussa earlier in the week.

Gulf Arab foreign ministers were to meet Sunday in the Saudi capital to discuss Iranian interference after Arab world unrest spilled over into some of the region's Western-backed monarchies.

Abdul Latif al-Zayani, the Gulf Cooperation Council's new secretary general, condemned "Iran's meddling in the internal affairs of GCC countries" on the eve of the meeting, saying it "threatened security and stability in the region".

Yemeni police killed an anti-regime protester and wounded scores more on Sunday, medics and witnesses said, as President Ali Abdullah Saleh called for an end to protests demanding that he step down.

They said security forces shot dead a young man seen tearing up a poster of Saleh at a demonstration in Taez, some 200 kilometers south of the capital.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad appointed former agriculture minister Adel Safar the new premier on Sunday and asked him to form a government as thousands joined the funeral procession for protesters killed in Douma.

Cell phone and internet networks failed for several hours on Sunday "due to an overload", according to a customer representative, a day after authorities carried out a wave of arrests in protest cities.

Militant groups in the Gaza Strip vowed again Sunday to avenge the killing of three of their own, saying Israel would be punished for the strike.

"The occupation's crimes will not go unpunished and it will bear all consequences," said a joint statement from the military wings of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other armed Palestinian factions.

Israel on Sunday demanded the retraction of a United Nations report deeply critical of its deadly 2008-2009 offensive on the Gaza Strip after the main author expressed regret over the conclusions.

South African judge Richard Goldstone had faced down enormous criticism in Israel at the time over the report which accused both Israel and the Hamas rulers of Gaza of potential war crimes during the 22-day conflict.

A coalition air raid late on Friday killed 13 people, four of them civilians, some 15 kilometers (10 miles) east of the battleground Libyan oil town of Brega, a rebel civilian official told Agence France Presse.

The four civilians comprised an ambulance driver and three medical students from the second city of Benghazi, who were part of a rebel convoy of five or six vehicles, said Issa Khamis, liaison officer for the rebels' transitional government in the town of Ajdabiya, east of Brega.