An insurgent accused of masterminding a bloody Baghdad church siege last year grabbed a policeman's gun mid-interrogation and led a prison mutiny that left eight Iraqi police, including a general, and 10 detainees dead, officials said Sunday.

The incident came as security was tightened in Iraq where authorities fear reprisals from the local branch of al-Qaida after the death of Osama bin Laden in a U.S. special forces raid in Pakistan on Sunday, with 24 policemen already having been killed in a car bomb south of Baghdad on Thursday.

Syrian troops backed by tanks swept early Saturday into Banias, a hub of anti-regime protests, as residents formed human chains in a bid to halt the military operation, rights activists said.

Electricity and communications were cut as the tanks entered along three axes heading towards the southern sector of the city on the Mediterranean coast, the bastion of the protesters.

The United States warned Friday it would take "additional steps" against Syria if it continues a brutal crackdown on protesters, a week after imposing tough sanctions on the Arab nation.

"The United States believes that Syria's deplorable actions toward its people warrant a strong international response," the White House said in one of its strongest statements yet since the outbreak of unrest there.

A U.S. drone attack in Yemen targeted but failed to kill U.S.-Yemeni cleric and terror suspect Anwar al-Awlaqi, who is linked to al-Qaida and considered a major threat to the United States, U.S. media reported Friday.

The drone attack Thursday killed two local members of the militant network, a security source and witnesses told Agence France Presse in Yemen.

Syria's security forces shot dead 30 people Friday, a Syrian human rights activist told the AP, as thousands rallied on a "Day of Defiance" against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad after tanks converged on protest centers.

At the same time, "armed criminal gangs" killed one officer and four policemen, state news agency SANA said.

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh told a mass rally of supporters on Friday that he would resist calls to quit, describing as "outlaws" tens of thousands of protesters gathered a short distance away.

"I can assure you that I will resist," Saleh told the crowd in the capital Sanaa's Sabbine Square after taking part in the main weekly Muslim prayers at nearby Tahrir Square.

France has ordered 14 people who served as Libyan diplomats under Moammer Gadhafi's regime to leave the country within two days, the French foreign ministry said on Friday.

"France has declared persona non grata 14 Libyan ex-diplomats posted in France," the ministry said in a statement, indicating that Paris no longer recognized their diplomatic status.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday after talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy that France wants the new Palestinian government to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

"What I heard from President Sarkozy is that they must recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people," Netanyahu said outside the Elysee Palace in Paris, after a meeting he described as "good, far-ranging and friendly".

A ceasefire in the Libyan conflict could be reached within weeks, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said Thursday following a meeting of the international contact group on Libya.

"A few weeks is a realistic period" to secure a truce, Frattini said on Radio Uno in reply to a question.

Dozens of armored vehicles, including tanks and troops reinforcements, were deployed Thursday near the Syrian coastal town of Banias, an activist told Agence France Presse, contacted by telephone.

"It looks like they are preparing to attack the town, like they did in Daraa," the flashpoint town where the protest movement was born, he said.