Pirates hijacked an Italian chemical and oil tanker with six Italians, five Ukrainians and seven Indians on board at dawn on Tuesday off Oman in an area where Somali pirates operate, officials said.

"It was attacked at four or five in the morning. There were 18 people on board," Domenico Ievoli, the Naples-based owner of the ship, Marnavi, told Agence France Presse.

Kuwait's public prosecutor released 32 stateless people on bail on Tuesday after holding them for nine days for taking part in a protest to demand citizenship, their lawyer said.

"The prosecutor has just ordered their release on bail of $720 each. We are currently undertaking the necessary procedures to free them," Ali al-Sabri told Agence France Presse.

Al-Qaida's Iraq franchise claimed responsibility for a wave of bombings last week that killed scores of people and heightened sectarian tensions days after the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

The self-proclaimed "Islamic State of Iraq," inspired by the late Osama bin Laden, issued a statement Monday referring to "Thursday's Invasion" and vowing to protect Iraq's Sunni Muslims from an "Iranian project."

Arab League observers have arrived in the flashpoint Syrian city of Homs but are unable to do their job, the head of the country's main opposition group said on Monday.

Syrian National Council (SNC) head Burhan Ghalioun told reporters at a Paris news conference that some of the observers were in the besieged city "but they are saying they cannot go where the authorities do not want them to go."

The United Nations' top envoy in Iraq, German diplomat Martin Kobler, does not expect civil war to break out in the country, he was quoted as saying on Monday.

"The country is facing significant security problems," he said, pointing to a string of attacks since last week that have claimed dozens of lives.

Egypt's prosecutor general on Monday referred two Israelis and a Ukrainian accused of arms smuggling to the Emergency Supreme State Security Court, his office said.

The Ukrainian and one Israeli are in custody, while the other Israeli will be tried in absentia, the prosecutor's office said in a statement.

The bloc loyal to anti-U.S. cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called on Monday for the dissolution of parliament and early elections, the latest step in a political standoff that has stoked sectarian tensions.

The movement's parliamentary chief Baha al-Araji said in a statement that his bloc in Iraq's Council of Representatives wanted to "dissolve parliament and repeat elections."

France wants Arab League peace monitors to deploy immediately to the Syrian city of Homs, where regime forces are suppressing a popular revolt, the foreign ministry said.

"The Damascus authorities must imperatively, in accordance with the Arab League plan, allow observers access this afternoon to the city of Homs, where the violence is particularly bloody," spokesman Bernard Valero said.

The United States is considering Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh's request to visit, but would only grant him entry for "legitimate" medical treatment, a senior U.S. official said Monday.

Officials also said President Barack Obama's top anti-terror advisor John Brennan called Yemeni Vice President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi on Sunday to urge "maximum restraint" after forces backing Saleh killed 13 demonstrators.

Clashes between loyalists of Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh and protesters from the defense ministry demanding an end to corruption left two people injured on Monday, witnesses said.

Hundreds of officers from the defense ministry's media arm, known as the Department of Moral Guidance, staged a sit-in outside their Sanaa headquarters, calling for General Ali al-Shater, who has headed the department since 1978, to be fired over corruption, witnesses said.