NATO is not considering any involvement in Syria or Iran, the alliance's top commander in Europe said on Tuesday, after Russian claims that such plans were afoot.

"In terms of Syria, I can tell you from a NATO perspective, we are not conducting any planning, we are not doing any detailed analysis, we are simply monitoring the situation," Admiral James Stavridis, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, told a panel discussion in Berlin.

European and Arab nations want a U.N. Security Council vote next week on a resolution condemning Syria's crackdown on protests and hinting at sanctions, diplomats said Tuesday.

Britain, France, Germany and Arab nations are working on the resolution which could face Russian opposition because of a call on all states to follow Arab League sanctions against President Bashar al-Assad.

Britain, France and the United States on Tuesday condemned Russia's arms sales to Syria which they said was fueling President Bashar al-Assad's deadly crackdown on protests.

Britain's U.N. ambassador Mark Lyall-Grant called the Russian weapons sales "irresponsible," at a Security Council debate on the Middle East.

Al-Qaida fighters agreed on Tuesday to withdraw from the central Yemeni city of Rada, which they seized a week ago, a military source said.

"Tribal mediation carried out by Sheikh Hashed Fadhl al-Qawsi succeeded, after three days of talks, to convince the armed al-Qaida men to leave Rada," a senior official told Agence France Presse.

A rocket fired from the Gaza Strip landed in southern Israel on Tuesday, causing no damage or injuries, an Israeli police spokesman said.

"One rocket was fired earlier this morning from Gaza and landed in an open area in the Eshkol region," Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told Agence France Presse.

Blogger Michael Nabil, who was jailed last year for insulting Egypt's armed forces, was released on Tuesday, his brother said.

Marc Nabil posted a picture on Twitter of his brother on his release from prison.

Security has tightened in Damascus, the city that until now had been spared the worst of the daily bloodshed that has marked the pro-democracy revolt against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

Politics, city residents said, is now firmly part of the lives of those who until now functioned almost normally despite ten months of protests and crackdown that the United Nations says has killed 5,400 people.

Baghdad hit out on Tuesday at alleged Turkish provocations after Ankara said it would speak out if sectarian conflict erupted in Iraq, in a dramatic worsening of tensions between the two neighbors.

Despite improving ties and increasing trade between the pair in recent years, the rhetoric between Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan has become heated in the past two weeks as Iraq has grappled with a political crisis that has stoked sectarian tensions.

Thousands of soldiers continued sit-ins Tuesday for a second day in Yemen demanding the "official" ouster of the Air Force commander they accuse of corruption, Agence France Presse correspondents and military officials said.

They are demanding the dismissal of General Mohammed Saleh al-Ahmar, a half-brother of President Ali Abdullah Saleh who left Yemen on Sunday for the United States following a year-long uprising against his 33 years in power.

Syrian security forces killed 52 people across the country on Tuesday as troops stormed Hama following large protests in the flashpoint central city, activists said.

"The Syrian armed forces stormed the neighborhoods of Bab Qubli and al-Jarajmah in Hama, firing heavy machineguns," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.