Syria, Egypt and Middle East unrest - live updates
Syrian opposition calls for UN help to stop massacre
Egypt's military leaders apologise to women after beating
Voting starts in runoffs for Egypt's second round elections
Their arrest was caught on film last week.
The Bahraini government has promised an investigation, Reuters reports. "An investigation has been opened to review the arrest and legal procedures relating to the two women," a statement said.
Alkhawaja, the daughter of a jailed opposition leader, promised to reveal more about her ordeal today.
8.43am: Welcome to Middle East Live.
In Syria the Assad regime is accused of trying to stamp out dissent ahead of a visit on Thursday by the Arab League. And in Egypt voting has started in runoff ballots for the country's second round of elections amid growing calls for a swifter hand over to civilian rule.
Here's a round up of the main developments:
Syrian opposition leader Burhan Ghalioun claims the regime of president Bashar al-Assad is using a deal with the Arab League as cover for wave of attacks on protesters. He also called for urgent international action to prevent a massacre.
As many as 150 p! eople an d possibly more have killed in the last two days in fighting between the army and military defectors and armed opponents of the government, marking a sharp increase in violence the Washington Post reports. An activist who gave his name as Osama Dughaim said via Skype that he was close to Jabal Zawia, an area near Idlib that has seen the fiercest fighting. Both his village and the nearby area were surrounded by army tanks, he said, adding that people under attack whom he had spoken to Tuesday reported 150 deaths. The army was shelling the area, he said.
Despite the crackdown the funeral of one of those killed in Idlib province turned into protest rally.
The footage shows the funeral of Abdel-Sater.
Egypt
Hundreds of women have taken to the streets of Cairo to protest against military rule and the brutal treatment of female protesters by Egypt's security services. The women rallied outside a government office complex in Tahrir Square, the scene of violent clashes earlier on Tuesday in which at least four demonstrators were shot dead by military police.
Egypt's military leaders have issued an apology to women after footage of troops brutally beating a stripped woman on Saturday provoked widepsread outrage, Jadaliyya reports. "The army council deeply apologises to the great Egyptian women following what happened during the latest demonstrations in front of the cabinet and the People's Assembly," the statement from Scaf said.
The latest violence underlines the need to accelerate the transition to civilian rule, argues Marc Lynch in Foreign Policy magazine. The recurrent political crises and outbursts of horrifying violence by regime security forces demonstrate clearly the existential costs of the Scaf's mishandling of the transition. The parliamentary elections should continue, the upper house elections should be cancelled, a civilian President should be elected by February (though I'm unsure as to whether the Parliamentary or electoral route makes the most sense), and full executive and legislative authority should then be transferred from the Scaf to these democratically legitimate bodies. The constitution should then be drafted over the course of a year, followed perhaps by new elections. I don't expect the Scaf to willingly agree to this plan, or even to agree with the diagnosis of its failures, given its confrontational response to the Cabinet violence crisis and aggressive use of state media to shape Egyptian opinion. But it is ever more clear that the Scaf is not capable of overseeing a genuine democratic transition, and that its recurrent resort to violence against its own people should badly undermine its legitimacy. Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, Libya's detained former heir apparent, says he is being treated well in prison but complains that he is being denied access to a lawyer. Speaking to a Human Right Watch team, who visited him in jail, he said: "The treatment is okay; at least I'm in my own country. There is no torture or anything like that." But he said he was being kept in "total isolation" and not allowed to speak to members of his family or legal representatives. Two leading members of Iraq's largest and most powerful Sunni tribe have warned of imminent sectarian chaos in the wake of the US withdrawal, claiming that the go! vernment of prime minister Nouri al-Maliki is promoting an anti-Sunni agenda. Their warnings come as Iraq's vice-president, Tariq al-Hashimi, defended himself over claims in an arrest warrant issued for him that he had used his guards to act as hit squads to target political rivals and had ordered a recent car bombing near the Iraqi parliament. The US state department has called on Iran to release an American man who was arrested in Tehran and accused of being a CIA spy tasked with infiltrating the regime's intelligence service. Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, a 28-year-old Iranian American, confessed on state-run television to spying for Washington.Libya
Iraq
Iran
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