Dozens of armored vehicles, including tanks and troops reinforcements, were deployed Thursday near the Syrian coastal town of Banias, an activist told Agence France Presse, contacted by telephone.

"It looks like they are preparing to attack the town, like they did in Daraa," the flashpoint town where the protest movement was born, he said.

An Arab summit that had been due to be held in Baghdad next week has been postponed until March 2012, the Arab League chief and Iraq's foreign minister said Thursday, after Gulf calls for a cancelation.

"It has been decided to postpone the Baghdad summit until March 2012 at the request of the Republic of Iraq which will retain the right to host the (next) summit," said a statement released by the 22-nation bloc after talks between its secretary general Amr Moussa and Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari.

Syrian troops arrested 300 people in a Damascus suburb on Thursday even as they pulled back from the protest hub of Daraa after a military lockdown of more than a week.

Activists, meanwhile, vowed a "Day of Defiance" on Friday to press a seven-week-old anti-regime campaign in which 607 people have been killed, according to human rights groups, while 8,000 people have been jailed or gone missing.

The United States and Italy called for an immediate end to the crackdown in Syria on Thursday and warned about the rising influence of Iran amid the multiple crises shaking the Arab world, Agence France Presse reported.

"The Syrian government must immediately stop the violence and resume a path of dialogue with those who want reform," Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said at a joint news conference with Clinton in Rome.

A court sentenced former Egyptian interior minister Habib al-Adly to 12 years for corruption on Thursday in the first trial of an official from the regime of ousted president Hosni Mubarak.

Adly, who ran Mubarak's security services for more than a decade before the strongman's overthrow in February in the face of 18 straight days of mass protests, was convicted of money-laundering and illicitly enriching himself while in office.

A U.S. drone attacked a Saudi al-Qaida leader in southern Yemen on Thursday, but missed and killed two local al-Qaida members, a security source and witnesses told Agence France Presse.

The drone had targeted the Saudi as he drove to the home of local al-Qaida men, the security source said, asking not to be identified.

Even if Iran obtains nuclear weapons it will not use them against Israel or other countries in the Middle East, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told the Haaretz newspaper on Thursday, Agence France Presse reported.

The views expressed in the interview with the Israeli daily appear to put the defense minister at odds with many in the Israeli military and political establishment, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

A suicide attacker blew up a bomb-filled car at a police station south of Baghdad, killing 21 policemen on Thursday, as Iraqi forces braced for al-Qaida revenge attacks after Osama bin Laden's death.

The attack, which also wounded at least 75 policemen, was the worst in Iraq in more than a month, and pushed security chiefs to install new checkpoints, tighten access to key roads and restrict movement between provinces.

Seven people, including four policemen and a soldier, were killed in clashes between security forces and gunmen in Yemen's restive south on Wednesday, a security official and medics told Agence France Presse.

Clashes erupted when armed men fired "three mortar shells" at two police vehicles leaving the riot-police headquarters in Zinjibar, capital of Abyan province.

Libyan leader Moammer Gadhafi’s forces pounded the lifeline port of Misrata with deadly fire on Wednesday, as the International Criminal Court said his regime was still carrying out crimes against humanity, Agence France Presse reported.

A rebel spokesman said at least five people were killed as loyalists shelled Misrata port, from which an International Organization of Migration ship managed to evacuate about 800 people, including stranded migrants and wounded.