Syria said Monday it will accept observers as part of an Arab League plan to end deadly unrest if its conditions are met, in a last-ditch bid to stave off crippling sanctions.

"The Syrian government responded positively to the signing of the protocol" on the dispatch of observers "based on the Syrian understanding of this cooperation," foreign ministry spokesman Jihad Maqdesi told reporters.

Forces loyal to Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh shot dead a woman and wounded six other people when they opened fire on a crowd of protesters in the city of Taez on Monday, medics said.

The protest was over an immunity clause in the Gulf-sponsored transition plan which Saleh signed last month to hand power over to his deputy, Vice President Abdrabuh Mansour Hadi.

Syrian authorities on Monday arrested blogger Razan Ghazzawi at the border with Jordan as she headed to Amman to take part in a workshop on press freedom in the Arab world, activists said.

The Syrian Centre for Media and Free Expression called for the release of Ghazzawi, who was to represent the group at the forum, and for the authorities to halt "the repression of bloggers and journalists" in Syria.

The emir of energy-rich Qatar moved on Monday to reassure consuming countries that energy supplies from the Middle East will not be disrupted by political upheavals sweeping the region.

"Events in the Arab region raised concern over energy supply... I would like to stress on the commitment made ... to maintain oil supply," Emir Sheikh Khalifa bin Hamad al-Thani said at the opening of an energy forum in Doha.

Many former U.S. intelligence officials and Iran experts believe last month's explosion at a military base near Tehran was part of a covert effort by the U.S., Israel and other states to disable Iran's nuclear and missile programs, The Los Angeles Times reported late Sunday.

The huge explosion ripped through the Revolutionary Guard Corps base on November 12, leveling most of the buildings and killing 17 people, including a founder of Iran's ballistic missile program, General Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam.

Prime minister-designate Mohammed Basindawa is expected to announce a national unity government within two days, a European diplomat and a Yemeni official said on Sunday.

The government "will be formed within the next couple of days, and if they do it today it is even better," Michele Cervone d'Urso, the EU's first ambassador to Yemen, told Agence France Presse.

A senior U.S. official said on Sunday that the world is looking for peaceful ways to end "killing and brutality" in Syria, accusing Iran of supporting the murder of Syrian people.

"While the goal of all us is to find ways to stop the killing and brutality, we are looking for peaceful ways to do so," Jeffrey Feltman, assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs, told reporters in Amman.

Syria faced new sanctions after flouting Sunday an Arab League deadline to accept observers to monitor the unrest sweeping the country, which the U.N. says has killed more than 4,000 people.

A senior Qatari official said Damascus had asked for "new clarifications and further amendments to be made to the protocol which was proposed" to cover the deployment of the observer mission.

Five Yemeni soldiers were killed in an attack by al-Qaida suspects on their post near the southern restive city of Zinjibar in Abyan province, a military official told Agence France Presse on Sunday.

"Al-Qaida militants attacked a military barracks using rocket propelled grenades and machineguns east of Zinjibar... killing five soldiers" late on Saturday, the official said.

Seven young Israeli women, six of them minors, have been arrested on suspicion of participating in the destruction of hundreds of Palestinian olive trees, Israeli police said on Sunday.

The women are also accused of taking part in demonstrations against the dismantling of illegal settlement outposts in the West Bank, during which Israeli army equipment was damaged, a police spokeswoman told Agence France Presse.