A group of 38 women and seven girls arrested last week during a protest against Bahrain's parliamentary by-elections have reportedly been tortured or ill-treated, Amnesty International said.

"They were apprehended without lawyers present and some of them reportedly tortured or otherwise ill-treated," the London-based advocacy group said in a statement late on Monday.

Iraq has signed an agreement with the United States to buy 18 F-16s and has already made an initial payment as part of the deal, an adviser to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Tuesday.

"Iraq has signed with Washington to buy the F-16s," Ali Mussawi said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested in an interview published Tuesday that he would not seek to lure the Palestinians back to peace talks by renewing a freeze on settlement building.

"We already gave at the office," Netanyahu told The Jerusalem Post, referring to a 10-month partial settlement freeze that expired in late September 2010.

Troops of Libya's new rulers seized control of the port in Sirte, Moammar Gadhafi's birthplace, in fighting with the ousted leader's diehards during the night, a commander told Agence France Presse on Tuesday.

"There were clashes in the night and we now are controlling the port," said Commander Mustafa bin Dardef of the Zintan brigade, which is attached to the National Transitional Council (NTC), the new ruling body of Libya.

Syrian forces strafed the city of Rastan in central Homs province with machinegun fire from sunrise on Tuesday, wounding at least 20 people, a human rights group said.

The city, about 180 kilometers (120 miles) from Damascus and a gateway to the country's north, has been the focus of security force operations against anti-regime dissent for several days, according to activists.

Egyptian fire fighters have managed to control a blaze at the site of a gas pipeline to Israel which was attacked overnight, the official MENA news agency said on Tuesday.

At least three gunmen in a van opened fire on a gas installation before an explosion hit the pipeline near the town of al-Arish in the north of the Sinai Peninsula, witnesses said.

Western nations are trying to unleash "total chaos" in Syria that will lead to the break-up of the country, Syria's foreign minister told the U.N. on Monday.

With Europe and the United States pressing for U.N. Security Council sanctions against Syria, Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said the protests in which at least 2,700 people have been killed have become a "pretext for foreign interventions."

More than 40 Bahraini women were arrested and beaten by security forces for protesting against parliamentary by-elections, the main Shiite opposition group Al-Wefaq said in a statement Monday.

"More than 40 Bahraini women were savagely arrested ... in a commercial center where they were beaten," it said.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged China to back a "strong" U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria when she met Monday with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, a senior U.S. official said.

Their conversation "had to do with the need for a strong U.N. Security Council resolution that calls for the violence to end," the senior U.S. State Department official told reporters on the condition of anonymity.

A rocket-propelled grenade attack targeted the airport at Jijel, 350 kilometers east of Algiers at the weekend, but caused no casualties or damage, media reports said Monday.

Senior officials met at Jijel Sunday following the attack and agreed to step up security, a local source said.