Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who is due to step down next month, landed in Britain on Saturday from Oman on his way to the United States for medical treatment, Yemeni and British officials said.

Saleh, who had mistakenly been reported to have left the Gulf sultanate earlier this week, arrived on Saturday afternoon at Stansted airport, just outside London, the Yemeni defense ministry's news website Sept.net said.

Two women employed by the office of Iraq's fugitive vice president Tareq al-Hashemi have been detained by security forces and may be at risk of torture, rights group Amnesty International said.

Hashemi, a Sunni, has been accused of running a death squad, a charge he denies. He is holed up in Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region, which has so far declined to hand him over to the central government.

The opposition Syrian National Council on Saturday urged Syria's diaspora to protest outside Russian embassies against Moscow's opposition to a draft resolution on Syria at the U.N. Security Council.

"We call upon all Syrians abroad to show solidarity with our people inside the country and protest against the Russian position by holding sit-ins in front of the embassies of the (Syrian) regime, Russian embassies, and at U.N. centers tomorrow Sunday at 2:00 pm their local time," Samir Neshar, a member of the SNC's executive committee, said at a news conference in Istanbul.

The Arab League said on Saturday it was suspending its observer mission monitoring the deadly regime crackdown on dissent in Syria because of the upsurge in violence, a League official said.

"The decision to suspend the Arab League mission in Syria has been taken because of the upsurge in violence, and an official announcement will be made later," the official told Agene France Presse on condition of anonymity.

At least 15 Somali migrants were killed and 40 left missing after their boat capsized off the coast of Libya this week, the Somali ambassador to Tripoli told AFP on Saturday.

"Fifteen bodies, including one child and 12 women, were recovered off the coast of Misrata after their boat sank," ambassador Abdelghami Wais said, adding the bodies were found Wednesday on the shore of the western port city.

Traffic flowed through Cairo's Tahrir Square on Saturday after the end of a three-day sit-in to mark one year since the uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak, even as more protests were planned.

Tents were still pitched in the center of the square, where dozens of protesters gathered ahead of demonstrations to demand the ouster of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) now ruling the country.

A high-ranking police officer, a soldier and four militants were killed in separate acts of violence in south Yemen, a security official and witnesses told Agence France Presse on Saturday.

The police official said Mubarak Barafaa, head of a criminal investigation unit, was cut down by machinegun fire late on Friday close to his house in Ghayl Ba Wazir, in the southeastern province of Hadramawt.

The Gulf Arab states and Turkey, which have spearheaded regional condemnation of the Syrian regime for its deadly crackdown, urged Damascus Saturday to accept an Arab League plan to stop the bloodshed "without delay."

The Arab plan, which envisages President Bashar Assad transferring power to his deputy and the formation of a national unity government within two months, has been rejected by Syria.

Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani on Saturday backed minority Kurds in Syria, who have rallied against the rule of President Bashar Assad during 10 months of nationwide protests.

Barzani, the president of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, was speaking at a two-day conference of Syrian Kurds in the Iraqi Kurdish capital of Arbil.

At least 34 people died in violence across Syria on Saturday, as activists reported fierce clashes between soldiers and deserters.

Twenty-three of those reported killed were military or security personnel.