Thousands of Libyans celebrated victories over rebel forces claimed by Moammar Gadhafi's regime Sunday in the center of Tripoli with gunfire lasting for hours and hooting of horns.

"We are shooting to celebrate because we are beating al-Qaida. We have won, al-Qaida is gone," one soldier told an AFP correspondent, apparently unaware of rebel denials that key towns had been seized.

Oman's Sultan Qaboos has replaced two ministers, days after protests erupted demanding an end to corruption in the normally placid Gulf state, official media reported on Saturday.

The sultan has appointed Khaled bin Hilal bin Saud al-Busaidi as a minister of the royal court, replacing Sayed Ali bin Hmud al-Busaidi, the state ONA news agency said.

Saudi Arabia's interior ministry said on Saturday that protests were illegal, amid various calls for demonstrations demanding change in the ultra-conservative kingdom, state media said.

"Regulations in the kingdom forbid categorically all sorts of demonstrations, marches and sit-ins... as they contradict Islamic Sharia law and the values and traditions of Saudi society," said a ministry statement carried by SPA state news agency.

Two men were killed during clashes in Egypt between Muslims and Christians, and a church was set on fire in the village of Sol, south of Cairo, a security official said on Saturday.

"Two people were killed, and the Shahedain church set on fire in clashes between two families," the official told the MENA news agency.

Two Iranian warships, which entered the Mediterranean last month sparking an outcry from Israel, have passed through the Suez Canal back into the Red Sea, naval commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayari said on Saturday.

"The flotilla ... has completed its mission successfully in the Mediterranean Sea and has returned to the Red Sea transiting through the Suez Canal," the official news agency IRNA quoted Sayari as saying.

Up to 10 people were killed and more than 20 wounded in clashes between Libyan rebels and loyalists of MoammAr Gadhafi in the oil town of Ras Lanuf, doctors said Saturday.

"There are 10 dead," Doctor Awad al-Quwairi told Agence France Presse at a hospital in Brega, the next oil town along the Mediterranean coast towards the rebel-held east from where the fighting took place on Friday.

Egypt's former interior minister Habib al-Adly pleaded not guilty to corruption charges on Saturday, in the first trial of a member of ousted president Hosni Mubarak's regime.

Standing in the dock and dressed in white prison clothes, Adly denied accusations of money laundering and unlawful acquisition of public money.

At least 17 people were killed Friday when a huge explosion ripped through a military weapons depot outside Benghazi, the main city held by Libyan rebels fighting Moammar Gadhafi.

Dr. Habib al-Obeidi in Benghazi's al-Jalaa hospital said the blast also hit a residential area. Witnesses on the scene, about 32 kilometers from downtown, said ambulances were rushing to the area and secondary explosions caused two fire trucks to blow up.

Egypt's new Prime Minister Essam Sharaf vowed on Friday to respond to demands for democratic change as he addressed thousands of protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square a day after his appointment.

"I am here because I draw my legitimacy from you ... I will exert all my effort to respond to your demands," Sharaf told flag-waving supporters in the square, the center of protests that toppled president Hosni Mubarak last month.

Libyan police fired tear gas at protestors demonstrating against Moammar Gadhafi's regime in Tripoli Friday as rebel fighters in eastern Libya tried to push the front line nearer to the capital.

Some 100 anti-Gadhafi demonstrators clashed with police in the Tajoura neighborhood in eastern Tripoli after Friday prayers, a witness said, while another said opponents and supporters of the regime traded blows near the capital's Green Square.