The United States on Saturday praised Yemen's president for steps taken as part of the ongoing political transition even as the capital's airport was temporarily shut down and tensions ran high in Sanaa.

"The United States welcomes President Abd Rabo Mansour Hadi's announcement of civilian and military personnel transfers as part of the ongoing political transition in Yemen," State Department acting spokesman Mark Toner said.

With a White House meeting, talks at a think-tank, and interviews with newspapers, Islamists unshackled by the Arab Spring are launching a new charm offensive to reassure a nervous Washington.

The rise to power of elected Islamists in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere has alarmed many Americans, who fear the emergence of Iran-style theocracies that would deny the rights of women and minorities and antagonize Israel.

Bahrain is examining a request to transfer to Denmark a jailed Shiite activist who has been on hunger strike for almost two months, who is also a Danish citizen, the BNA news agency reported Saturday.

Seif al-Islam, son of slain leader Moammar Gadhafi, will be moved next week to Tripoli and has agreed to take a lawyer, Libya's representative to the International Criminal Court said Saturday.

"Seif al-Islam will be transferred from his prison in Zintan to an official prison in the capital Tripoli before the end of the (coming) week," Ahmed Jehani told Agence France Presse, declining to give an exact date for security reasons.

Salafist politician Hazem Abu Ismail will probably be disqualified from his bid for Egypt's presidency because his late mother was a US citizen, the electoral commission said on Saturday.

Under the country's electoral law, all candidates for the presidency, their parents and their wives must have only Egyptian citizenship.

The trial opened in Saudi Arabia on Saturday of 50 al-Qaida suspects accused of carrying out and plotting attacks in the kingdom, including U.S. and British interests, state news agency SPA reported.

It said 47 Saudis, a Syrian and a Yemeni national went on trial in the specialized criminal court in Riyadh.

A roadside bomb killed three policemen in Diyala province of central Iraq while a bomb inside a minibus in Baghdad left at least two people dead on Saturday, security and medical sources said.

The roadside bomb exploded as a police patrol passed by in Khan Bani Saad, a town south of Baquba, the capital of Diyala, a police major said.

Baton-wielding police on Saturday fired teargas to disperse a demonstration by thousands of jobless Tunisian graduates in the capital Tunis.

Protesters chanted "Down with the government!" and "Work, freedom, dignity", a slogan of the January 2011 revolution that toppled former strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

The Israeli army found an unexploded rocket near Eilat, two days after another rocket fired from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula hit the southern resort city, a military spokesman told Agence France Presse on Saturday.

"An unexploded rocket was found in an open area near Eilat," the spokesman said, noting that it was a Grad-type rocket. "It appears to be an additional rocket from the Thursday incident, bringing the total confirmed rockets fired to two."

A military appeals court in Tunis Saturday upheld the convictions of Tunisia's ousted president and his top officials for torturing army officers over an alleged coup plot, judicial sources told Agence France Presse.

"The verdict was pronounced Saturday in a closed door session," said one of the defense lawyers, Abada Kefi, who said he would take the case to a higher court.