A policeman in Bahrain has been arrested after a video showing him hitting a resident of a Shiite village was posted online, the interior ministry said on Tuesday.

"The video shows the policeman slapping a citizen in Aali, a local village, on December 23rd, 2012," the ministry said in a statement, adding that the officer was detained on Monday.

Iran on Tuesday launched naval maneuvers in the Gulf, and announced plans for another exercise in the strategic Strait of Hormuz later this week, media reports said.

Revolutionary Guards naval units began a four-day exercise inside Iranian waters at South Pars, a joint gas field between Iran and Qatar, a Guards spokesman was quoted as saying by the Fars news agency.

Police in Tehran said on Tuesday they had arrested more than 100 "thugs" as part of an operation to curb violent crime after the brutal assault of a man was captured on a surveillance camera.

"This (Tuesday) morning we apprehended over 100 thugs, some of whom had (criminal) records," the commander of Tehran metropolitan police, Hossein Sajedinia, said on state television.

The United Nations warned Tuesday that Syrians are "losing hope" as war worsens in their country, with prospects of a diplomatic end now at rock bottom, and international aid is cut.

Peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi's latest talks with Syria's President Bashar Assad produced no sign of a willingness to negotiate, diplomats said, and there are mounting warnings of a sectarian war taking over the uprising against Assad.

The Shin Bet internal security service has arrested 10 members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine accused of planning to kidnap Israelis, the agency said on Tuesday.

The arrests were made several months earlier but a media blackout was imposed.

An Egyptian court on Tuesday freed the former senate leader under ousted president Hosni Mubarak on bail, after spending the maximum permitted 18 months in jail awaiting his corruption trial, the official MENA news agency reported.

Safwat al-Sherif, one of the top-ranking members of Mubarak's National Democrat Party, was allowed out on payment of the equivalent of $8,100.

Moroccan authorities on Tuesday said they had broken up a recruitment cell for Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb in the central Fez region, after announcing the discovery of a jihadist network last month.

"The police, in coordination with the leadership of territorial surveillance, have dismantled a cell with six members, originating from the city of Fez," the interior ministry said in a statement.

Gunmen on motorbikes shot dead two senior Yemeni security officers in separate attacks in Sanaa on Tuesday, officials said.

Intelligence officer General Fadl al-Zamani of the national security services was shot dead at Bab al-Yaman, the entrance to the old city in Sanaa, a security official said, adding that the assailant had managed to escape.

Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday called for an "end to the bloodshed" in conflict-wracked Syria in his traditional Christmas message that touched on several other of the world's conflict zones and attacks on Christians.

"There is hope in the world... even at the most difficult times and in the most difficult situations," he said, praying for peace in Syria, whose people have been "deeply wounded and divided by a conflict which does not spare even the defenseless and reaps innocent victims."

The six Gulf states sharpened their tone against their Shiite neighbor Iran on Tuesday, demanding an immediate halt to its "interference" in their internal affairs while urging a rapid political transition in its ally Syria.

Concluding a two-day summit in Manama, the Gulf Cooperation Council members voiced support for Bahrain's Sunni minority regime while lashing out at Tehran, which they accuse of fueling a Shiite-led uprising in the host country last year.