Syrian forces strafed the city of Rastan in central Homs province with machinegun fire from sunrise on Tuesday, wounding at least 20 people, a human rights group said.

The city, about 180 kilometers (120 miles) from Damascus and a gateway to the country's north, has been the focus of security force operations against anti-regime dissent for several days, according to activists.

Egyptian fire fighters have managed to control a blaze at the site of a gas pipeline to Israel which was attacked overnight, the official MENA news agency said on Tuesday.

At least three gunmen in a van opened fire on a gas installation before an explosion hit the pipeline near the town of al-Arish in the north of the Sinai Peninsula, witnesses said.

Western nations are trying to unleash "total chaos" in Syria that will lead to the break-up of the country, Syria's foreign minister told the U.N. on Monday.

With Europe and the United States pressing for U.N. Security Council sanctions against Syria, Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said the protests in which at least 2,700 people have been killed have become a "pretext for foreign interventions."

More than 40 Bahraini women were arrested and beaten by security forces for protesting against parliamentary by-elections, the main Shiite opposition group Al-Wefaq said in a statement Monday.

"More than 40 Bahraini women were savagely arrested ... in a commercial center where they were beaten," it said.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged China to back a "strong" U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria when she met Monday with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, a senior U.S. official said.

Their conversation "had to do with the need for a strong U.N. Security Council resolution that calls for the violence to end," the senior U.S. State Department official told reporters on the condition of anonymity.

A rocket-propelled grenade attack targeted the airport at Jijel, 350 kilometers east of Algiers at the weekend, but caused no casualties or damage, media reports said Monday.

Senior officials met at Jijel Sunday following the attack and agreed to step up security, a local source said.

Syrian security forces shot dead four soldiers trying to desert on Monday, as troops deployed in several villages and China voiced concern over events in Syria.

"Four soldiers in Maar Shamsa in (northwestern) Idlib were shot dead while trying to flee the Wadi Deif military camp," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, reporting gunfire, arrests and murders over the weekend and on Monday across the country.

A general was killed and 30 other troops loyal to Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh were taken hostage when tribesmen overnight attacked their base north of Sanaa, tribal sources and officials said on Monday.

General Abdullah al-Kulaibi, head of the 63rd brigade of the elite Republican Guard unit, was killed in the attack by tribesman opposed to Saleh's rule in the strategic town of Nihm, the defense ministry said in a statement.

EU foreign policy Chief Catherine Ashton has appointed an advisor to mull over the fate of thousands of outlawed Iranians facing expulsion from a camp in Iraq, their home for 30 years.

A spokesman for Ashton said Monday that Jean De Ruyt, Belgium's former ambassador to the EU, will act in Brussels "as an advisor on the European Union's response" to Camp Ashraf, located near the border with Iran and home to some 3,400 Iranian dissidents.

Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya on Monday called for an inter-Palestinian strategic dialogue to decide on a joint strategy for establishing a Palestinian state.

"We are in favor of a strategic dialogue that will lead to a joint strategy regarding Palestine and activating the reconciliation we signed," he told reporters, referring to a unity deal between Hamas and its Fatah rivals which was signed in May but has yet to be implemented.