Egyptians turned out to vote again on Wednesday in the run-off of a staggered election marred by deadly clashes between protesters and security forces that have left 14 people dead in five days.

Polling stations opened at 8:00 am (06:00 GMT) in a third of the country's 27 provinces.

Bahraini riot police on Tuesday dispersed several hundred Shiite demonstrators who gathered on a highway leading to Manama in one of increasingly frequent anti-regime protests.

Police fired tear gas at protesters who flocked to the Budaiya highway from the village of Abu Saiba, west of Manama, an Agence France Presse journalist reported.

The Syrian navy and air force conducted live-fire man oeuvres on Tuesday to test their preparedness to repulse "any aggression against the homeland," the official SANA news agency reported.

"The air force and air defenses conducted maneuvers with live ammunition ... with a view to testing the combat capabilities of the air forces and to test their readiness to respond to any aggression" against the country, SANA said.

European Union powers led condemnation by U.N. Security Council members Tuesday of Israel's increased settlements in the occupied territories and growing attacks by settlers on Palestinians.

Britain, France, Germany and Portugal said in a joint statement after a council meeting on the Middle East conflict that they were "dismayed by these wholly negative developments" and the threat they pose to the peace process.

Egypt's military on Tuesday "strongly regretted" what it called "transgressions" against protesters, in a statement addressed to women after soldiers beat and stripped a female demonstrator.

The military would take legal action against those responsible for the abuse, said the statement, which came after a women's march in Cairo denouncing attacks on female protesters.

Up to 185 Syrians were killed on Tuesday, activists and a rights group said, as Damascus faced demands to halt its bloody nine-month crackdown on dissent a day after signing an Arab peace plan.

The Arab League said an advance team of observers would head Thursday to Damascus to lay the ground for monitors overseeing the plan, as Western powers and Gulf monarchs piled the pressure on Syria.

The six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council called on arch rival Iran on Tuesday to "stop meddling" in the internal affairs of the group's members and urged Syria to "immediately halt its killing machine."

"Stop these policies and practices ... and stop interfering in the internal affairs" of the Gulf nations, said a statement released at the end of the GCC annual summit in the Saudi capital Riyadh.

In response to the region's unprecedented upheaval, Gulf Cooperation Council chief Abdul Latif al-Zayani said Tuesday that the group's six members agreed to "adopt Saudi King Abdullah's initiative to make the GCC countries a single entity."

King Abdullah on Monday asked the GCC leadership to "move from a phase of cooperation to a phase of union," arguing the region's "security and stability are threatened" and that such challenges require "vigilance and a united stance."

Iraq's Sunni Arab Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi said on Tuesday he was "ready to face trial" on terror charges on condition that the case be heard in the autonomous Kurdish region.

"I suggest transferring the case to Kurdistan," Hashemi told a news conference in the Kurdish regional capital Arbil. "On this basis, I will be ready to face trial."

Representatives of all the Palestinian factions began meeting in Cairo on Tuesday to discuss ways of implementing a stalled reconciliation deal, delegates said.

But officials played down expectations of a breakthrough, with Fatah delegation head Azzam al-Ahmed telling Agence France Presse he did not expect any agreement on the key issues of security and an interim government "before the end of January."