Iran said on Tuesday it has arrested 10 people linked to the Mossad and that the Islamic republic had delivered the Israeli spy agency a "severe blow" after deeply infiltrating it.

Intelligence Minister Heyder Moslehi told reporters the arrests were the result of covert operations successfully carried out by the Iranian secret services.

Saudi Arabia's quest for a fourth Asian Cup lay in tatters on Monday after they sacked beleaguered coach Jose Peseiro in the wake of an embarrassing 2-1 defeat to Syria in their opening game.

The Portuguese, a former assistant to Carlos Queiroz at Real Madrid, had been under intense pressure after he failed to get Saudi Arabia to last year's World Cup.

Israeli warplanes launched twin air strikes on the Gaza Strip overnight in response to rocket and mortar fire from the Hamas-controlled territory, an army spokesman said on Monday.

The strikes targeted "centers of terrorist activities, which have been hit", said the spokesman, referring to projectiles fired from Gaza over the weekend.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Friday that Christian minorities in the Middle East are victims of "religious cleansing," following deadly attacks on churches in the region.

"We cannot accept and thereby facilitate what looks more and more like a particularly wicked program of cleansing in the Middle East, religious cleansing," he said in an annual New Year's address to religious leaders.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will meet with Saudi King Abdullah in New York Friday, where he is recovering from two back surgeries, the State Department said.

The meeting at the Plaza Hotel, where the monarch is recuperating, is scheduled for 7:00 pm (0000 GMT), said U.S. officials in a statement.

Al-Qaida militants killed five Yemeni soldiers and wounded two others along with a civilian on Friday when they attacked a military convoy in restive southern Abyan province, officials said.

"We were hit today in an al-Qaida ambush which resulted in the killing of five soldiers and two others being wounded," a security official told Agence France Presse.

Jordan's security services said Thursday they have arrested 51 people linked to southern rioting this week sparked by the murder of two men in a labor dispute.

"Fifty-one suspects were arrested on Wednesday night, but the murderer of two Jordanians is still at large," a security official told Agence France Presse.

The bodies of two Palestinians shot dead overnight in northern Gaza by Israeli troops were recovered Thursday by Palestinian medical officials.

Adham Abu Selmiya, the spokesman for the Hamas-run health services in the Gaza Strip, said an ambulance found the bodies of the two men on Thursday morning.

Kuwait's prime minister on Wednesday narrowly survived a parliament vote seen as a serious bid by the opposition to oust him, speaker Jassem al-Kharafi said.

Twenty-five MPs in the 50-seat assembly voted in support of Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Mohammad al-Ahmad al-Sabah, while 22 were against him and one abstained.

Al-Qaida would seem to have found an easy target in Middle Eastern Christians who have a limited ability to respond, but such attacks could easily escalate into sectarian clashes, analysts say.

Responsibility for the apparent suicide bombing early on New Year's Day at a Coptic church in Alexandria in which 21 people were killed and 79 were wounded has not yet been claimed, although Cairo has indirectly implicated al-Qaida.