Thousands of demonstrators massed Sunday at Manama's Al-Qudaibiya Palace, where Bahrain's cabinet meets, chanting slogans against the tiny but strategic Gulf state's government.

White-helmeted police with riot shields stood behind one gate, looking on as the flag-waving demonstrators chanted "Down Hamad! Down Hamad!", in reference to Bahrain's King Hamad.

Any international military intervention in Libya would have "absolutely negative" effects, France's Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said Sunday during a visit to neighbor Egypt.

"France, as well as many of its partners, is not in favor of any Western military intervention in Libya, which would have absolutely negative effects," Juppe told a news conference in Cairo.

Libyan helicopter gunships fired on a rebel force advancing west toward the capital along the Mediterranean coastline Sunday and forces loyal to leader Moammar Gadhafi fought intense ground battles with the rival fighters.

The opposition force pushed out of the rebel-held eastern half of Libya late last week for the first time and has been cutting a path west toward Tripoli.

A roadside bomb killed six people and wounded 12 aboard a bus in Iraq's southern port city of Basra on Sunday, a provincial official said.

The blast targeted a passing U.S. military convoy but instead struck the bus and wrecked it, the head of Basra provincial council's security committee, Ali al-Ghanimi, said.

The Yemeni opposition has called for an escalation in anti-regime demonstrations to force President Ali Abdullah Saleh to leave after the embattled leader refused to quit, a spokesman said on Sunday.

"We have called upon the people to widen demonstrations, and escalate the peaceful struggle in all regions until he (Saleh) is left with one option, that is to leave," said Mohammed Sabri, a leading member of the Common Forum opposition alliance.

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.