Suspected Al-Qaida gunmen shot dead a Yemeni intelligence officer in a drive-by attack in the southern city of Mukalla, capital of the southeastern Hadramawt province, a police source said on Saturday.

Two men riding a motorbike shot Colonel Abdullah al-Ribaki on Friday evening in a residential area of Mukalla, the source said, adding: "Al-Qaida is behind this killing."

A drive-by bomb attack on a checkpoint in the heart of Libya's restive second city of Benghazi slightly wounded a soldier early on Saturday, a security official told AFP.

"A bomb was thrown from a car at an army checkpoint at the Dubail crossroads in the center of Benghazi," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A prominent Syrian actress and activist who was detained by regime forces earlier this week was released after several hours, a human rights lawyer said on Saturday.

"The security forces released the actress May Skaf around 10:30 pm (1930 GMT) on Thursday," Anwar al-Bunni told AFP.

Demonstrators calling for Egypt's Islamist President Mohamed Morsi to resign and demanding early elections clashed with riot police in Cairo late Friday.

Hundreds of people had marched on Cairo's Tahrir Square on Friday for the protest, called by a number of opposition groups.

Russia's shipment of anti-ship missiles to Syria will "embolden" the regime and fuel the country's civil war, the U.S. military's top officer said Friday.

General Martin Dempsey's comments were the first official confirmation from the U.S. government that Moscow had sent advanced "ship-killer" cruise missiles to President Bashar Assad's regime.

Any decision on an eventual no-fly zone over Syria would have to be made by the United Nations, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan insisted on Friday.

"With respect to no-fly zone, I would like to make one observation: this is not a decision that could be taken between the U.S. and Turkey," Erdogan told a Washington think-tank during a trip to the United States.

Two bombs in a Sunni-majority area of west Baghdad killed at least 14 people on Friday, Iraqi medical officials said, the latest in a series of attacks targeting Sunnis.

The two roadside bombs also wounded at least 35 people, the officials said.

The Tunisian government has definitively banned hardline Salafist group Ansar al-Sharia from holding its annual congress at the weekend, the interior ministry announced on Friday.

"We have decided to prohibit this gathering, which would be in violation of the law and because of the threat it represents to public order," a statement said.

Middle East peace will prove impossible without Palestinian unity, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Friday, suggesting Ankara could help reconcile the Fatah and Hamas parties.

"The process of unity between Fatah and Hamas, this has to be achieved," Erdogan told a Washington think tank during a visit to the United States.

France said Friday it is opposed to having Iran attend a peace conference on Syria despite Damascus's ally Russia wanting Tehran's presence at the event expected in the first half of June.

Foreign ministry spokesman Philippe Lalliot said: "We do not want Iran. The Syrian crisis is contagious and affects the entire zone. Regional stability is at stake and we cannot see how a country (Iran) that threatens this stability can participate in this conference."