Israeli President Shimon Peres said on Tuesday that Israel's longstanding refusal to confirm or deny reports that it has a nuclear arsenal is itself an effective deterrent.

"Israel has 'real or assumed' capabilities that are sufficient for deterrence," Peres' office quoted him as telling a closed-door annual meeting of Israel's envoys abroad.

Clashes between Yemeni youths divided over a power transfer deal that grants President Ali Abdullah Saleh immunity from prosecution left 35 people injured on Tuesday, witnesses and medics said.

"Some 2,000 members of the Islamist Sunni al-Islah (reform) party, among them dissident soldiers, attacked our camp at dawn, injuring 35 people," Khalid al-Madani, head of the camp backed by supporters of Shiite Zaidi rebels, told Agence France Presse.

An Egyptian court ordered the Egyptian army on Tuesday to stop forced virginity tests on female detainees, months after the practice sparked a national outcry and stained the ruling military's reputation.

The Cairo Administrative Court ruled in favor of Samira Ibrahim, who sued the army over the practice, slammed by rights groups as torture and sexual violence.

Saboteurs blew up a gas pipeline in the flashpoint Syrian region of Homs on Tuesday, the official SANA news agency reported, as Arab League observers visited the provincial capital.

"An armed terrorist group targeted in a sabotage operation at 3:00 am (0100 GMT) on Tuesday a pipeline carrying gas between Abd Kafar and Rastan," said SANA, referring to towns in Homs, a hotbed of dissent against the regime.

Some 70,000 Syrians took to the streets of Homs as Arab League observers visited the protest hub on Tuesday and activists said security forces shot dead 35 people across the country.

"More than 70,000 demonstrators tried to enter al-Saa square in the center of the city of Homs, while the security agents used tear gas to disperse them," said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Saudi authorities have released seven Shiites detained after protests in the oil-rich Eastern Province earlier this year, activists said on Tuesday.

The group attended a "guidance session" by a Shiite cleric before leaving prison, the same sources said.

Iran opened a trial on Tuesday of an American of Iranian descent accused of spying for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, the Fars news agency reported.

"The first hearing in the trial of Amir Mirzai Hekmati, recently arrested for spying for the United States, started Tuesday morning" in a Tehran court, Fars reported.

A gunman shot dead at least one student and wounded four others at Damascus University on Sunday, Syrian state media reported, in an attack activists blamed on pro-regime students.

The assailant, identified as student Ammar Balush, went on the shooting spree with a handgun during exams at the biomedical faculty, said the official SANA news agency.

Pirates hijacked an Italian chemical and oil tanker with six Italians, five Ukrainians and seven Indians on board at dawn on Tuesday off Oman in an area where Somali pirates operate, officials said.

"It was attacked at four or five in the morning. There were 18 people on board," Domenico Ievoli, the Naples-based owner of the ship, Marnavi, told Agence France Presse.

Kuwait's public prosecutor released 32 stateless people on bail on Tuesday after holding them for nine days for taking part in a protest to demand citizenship, their lawyer said.

"The prosecutor has just ordered their release on bail of $720 each. We are currently undertaking the necessary procedures to free them," Ali al-Sabri told Agence France Presse.