Syrian authorities have stopped a U.N. humanitarian team from visiting the protest city of Daraa where hundreds are said to have been killed in a government crackdown, a U.N. spokesman said Monday.

"The U.N. humanitarian assessment mission has not been able to get into Daraa," U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters.

North and south Sudan have agreed to start withdrawing unauthorized troops from the flashpoint Abyei border region, the United Nations said, a week after clashes there left 14 people dead.

The two sides agreed that the pullout would begin from Tuesday and be completed within a week, the U.N. Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) said in a statement late on Sunday.

Yemeni security forces fired tear gas and live rounds on Monday to break up a demonstration in Taez, south of the capital, killing two protesters and injuring dozens, witnesses and a medic said.

The security forces moved to disperse a sit-in which had overnight blocked the main road in Taez, firing tear gas and live rounds, witnesses said.

Iran's ruling conservatives have increased the pressure on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to "obey" the Islamic republic's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, saying his latest pledges did not go far enough.

"The president said he would dishearten the enemies of the regime (in accepting Khamenei's authority) but that is not enough. We are waiting for him to act on his words," said influential religious authority Hojatoleslam Kazem Sediqi, widely quoted in Sunday papers.

Yemen's main opposition warned that a Gulf-led transition plan could end unless the president agreed to it within 48 hours as local officials said three more protesters were killed Sunday.

The Common Forum, an alliance of parliamentary opposition groups, repeated its support for the plan to end three months of political unrest but insisted President Ali Abdullah Saleh also commit himself.

Police used teargas to disperse protesters taking part in another anti-government demonstration in Tunis Sunday.

About 200 protesters gathered outside the municipal theater and along the Habib Bourguiba Avenue in central Tunis and sang the national anthem to galvanize support.

King Hamad on Sunday ordered an early end to Bahrain's state of emergency declared in mid-March to tackle Shiite-led protests, as leading opposition figures went on trial in a court set up under the law.

The announcement came as top opposition figures appeared in the court to face charges of trying to topple the ruling Sunni monarchy and of forming a terrorist organization.

A 12-year-old boy was among several people killed Sunday as Syrian troops hunted down opponents of President Bashar al-Assad in two restive cities, activists said, despite world anger over the bloody crackdown.

The military said six troops, including three officers, were killed in clashes as the army pursued "armed terrorist groups" in Homs, Banias and around the southern town of Daraa -- three protest hubs.

Egypt's military rulers warned Sunday they will use an "iron hand" to protect national security after clashes between Muslims and Christians in Cairo killed 12 people and injured scores.

Authorities would "strike with an iron hand all those who seek to tamper with the nation's security," Justice Minister Abdul Aziz al-Gindi told reporters after cabinet crisis talks.

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.