A pregnant woman was accidentally shot dead in the southern city of Aden on Saturday as protesters calling for the release of prisoners clashed with Yemeni police, government and medical officials said.

"An woman eight months pregnant died of her wounds after she was shot by live rounds," a medic told Agence France Presse.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Barack Obama could hold a three-way summit during the U.S. president's upcoming visit, Israel's deputy foreign minister said on Saturday.

"During the visit of President Obama, a three-way summit could take place or even four-way with King Abdullah II of Jordan," Danny Ayalon said, quoted by Israeli army radio.

Yemen's national security chief on Saturday accused Iran of "damaging Yemen" as the interior ministry said it was pursuing a probe into an Iran-linked arms shipment which was seized last month.

"Such a shipment cannot be made by traders or smugglers... Only an official power stands behind it," national security chief Ali Hassan al-Ahmedi told reporters in Sanaa.

Police in the north Iraqi city of Arbil said on Saturday they have arrested a teenage construction worker suspected of raping 14 young girls.

Tareq Nouri, the head of "asayesh" or Kurdish internal security forces in Arbil, said the accused confessed to raping the girls, all aged between six and nine, in deserted buildings or houses under construction.

Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali told Tunisian media on Saturday he will step down if he fails in his effort to form a new government within days, after his Islamist party rejected the plan.

"I will present the team no later than the middle of next week," Jebali said.

Thousands of people protested in central Tunis on Saturday shouting pro-Islamist and anti-French slogans, a day after the funeral of a murdered opposition figure became a mass rally against the ruling Islamist party.

"France get out!" and "The people want to protect the legitimacy" of the government were among slogans chanted by Ennahda party supporters who numbered more than 3,000, Agence France Presse journalists estimated.

The newly appointed patriarch of Iraq's largest Christian community said on Saturday that the Arab Spring had been hijacked by narrow interests and had promoted tension and bloodshed.

Asked about the impacts on Christians of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings across the Middle East that eventually led to the ouster of strongmen in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya and the conflict in Syria, the head of the Chaldean Church Louis Sako said the changes had initially signaled hope.

Israel's army on Saturday forced Palestinian activists to evacuate a West Bank encampment they tried to set up to protest against settlement building, witnesses said.

Soldiers dismantled tents that were being erected in two different areas near the town of Yatta in the southern West Bank, and forced activists to leave, the Palestinian witnesses said.

Syrian President Bashar Assad has changed seven ministers in his cabinet, the official SANA news agency reported on Saturday, without saying why. None of the key portfolios was affected.

The agency said Assad had decided to split the ministry of labor and social affairs into two, and brought in a woman, Kinda Shmat, to head the latter. Hassan Hijazi becomes labor minister.

Syrian warplanes launched air strikes within the Menegh military airbase in the northern province of Aleppo on Saturday after rebels stormed parts of the regime garrison, a watchdog said.

The fierce retaliation came after the insurgents, who have been attacking the base daily for months, succeeded in breaking into several areas, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.