Welcome to Middle East Live. Here's a round up of the main developments:

• Russia has circulated a surprise draft resolution aimed at resolving the crisis. The BBC's UN correspondent Barbara Plett writes:

Western diplomats say they are willing to negotiate the draft, but they want changes - such as much stronger language on human rights abuses, and endorsement of Arab League sanctions. Crucially they say the resolution should spell out that Damascus is primarily responsible for the violence, and not assign equal blame to the government and the opposition. Negotiations will be tough, but there is more hope now than there was even a day ago that some kind of resolution might be agreed.

• Vitaly Churkin, Russia's ambassador to the UN, said the resolution was aimed at reviving an Arab League plan which has stalled over Syria's refusal to allow in monitors.

Speaking to al-Jazeera he said excessive force had been used by the Syrian government, but he also claimed that extremist elements in the opposition were used protesters as human shields.

• The Arab League has postponed a meeting that was due to take place this weekend, according to AFP. But an official said negotiations were continuing in an effort to persuade Damascus to allow in observers.

• Syrian rebels claimed to have killed 27 members of the security forces in clashes on Thursday – providing more evidence that the country is sliding into a state of permanent armed insurgency. On the day that saw the Syrian uprising enter its 10th month, Human Rights Watch named 74 senior officials and commanders – including President Bashar al-Assad – who it said should face investigation for crimes against humanity.

• Activist Zainab Alkhawaja, who blogs under the name Angry Arabiya, has been arrested and punched in a incident caught on video, the New York Times reports.

Video posted online by opposition activists showed the blogger, Zainab Alkhawaja, being handcuffed and dragged away from a traffic circle in the capital, Manama. At one stage in the clip, a female police officer, apparently angered that Ms. Alkhawaja was practicing passive resistance, appeared to crouch down and punch her.

• The Bahrain Centre for Human Rights has launched an appeal for the release of Alkhawaja and another woman Masooma al-Sayed who was arrested along side her. It points out that Alkhawaja's father is the prominent activist Abdul Hadi AlKhawaja, who was sentenced to life in jail by a military tribunal for taking part in protests in February.

• A Cairo appeal court has ordered the release of all defendants, except blogger and activist Alaa Abd el Fattah, who were charged by authorities in connection events in Maspero in October when a demonstration by Copts was violently put down by the authorities, Jadaliyya reports. Adb El Fattah was allowed to vote in the second round of Egypt's elections, it said.

• A left wing candidate in the Egypt's is in intensive care after being beaten by the police, al-Masry al-Youm reports. Yasser el-Rafaie, who was standing for the Revolution Continues Alliance, was attacked by after attempting to enter a polling station in Sharqiya governorate to check on reported violations.

• The killing of Muammar Gaddafi could have been a war crime and will be investigated, according to the chief prosecutor of the international criminal court. Luis Moreno-Ocampo told reporters: "I think the way in which Mr Gaddafi was killed creates suspicions of... war crimes. We are raising this concern to the national authorities and they are preparing a plan to have a comprehensive strategy to investigate all these crimes."

Iran

• Downed foreign spy drones, including four Israeli and three US unmanned aircraft, are to go on display according to a state-run newspaper. Iran's English-language newspaper, the Tehran Times, quoted "an informed source" as saying that the exhibition will be held "in the near future", and that foreign ambassadors based in Tehran and local journalists would be invited.

Russia's draft resolution on Syria has been criticised by both France and US, but both countries have suggested it is a start, the Russian news agency RIA Novosti reports.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the proposal presented a "seeming parity between the government and peaceful protesters," but that the U.S. was going to "study the draft carefully." France's envoy to the UN, Gerard Araud, also criticized the draft, saying it was unbalanced and needed "a lot of amendments."

Reuters quotes extracts from the resolution:

The draft circulated unexpectedly by Russia on Thursday to the council expands and toughens Moscow's previous text, adding a new reference to "disproportionate use of force by Syrian authorities." The draft, obtained by Reuters, also "urges the Syrian government to put an end to suppression of those exercising their rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association."

More than 100 soldiers have declared they are switching to the opposition in Syria in the latest defection video.

The group, from the north west province of Idlib, describe themselves as the Martyrs of the Jabal Al-Zawiyah brigade, according to dissident Ammar Abdulhamid.

The video was posted to the Facebook group of the Free Syrian Army.

It is the latest reported defection in Idlib. A brigadier general Ahmad Muhammad Al-Shaikh declared he was joining the opposition earlier this week.

On Tuesday a defected soldier from Idlib claimed the FSA was in open warfare with the regular army in the province.

Violence has erupted once again in Cairo after soldiers beat a protester at a demonstration to occupy the cabinet building.

AP reports:

Hundreds of protesters threw rocks and firebombs at military police. Activist Hussein Hammouda says security forces responded by throwing rocks and aiming water cannons from inside the gates of the nearby parliament building. Activists say the clashes began after soldiers severely beat a young man who was part of a sit-in outside the Cabinet building. Protester Mostafa Sheshtawy says security forces burned protesters' tents and ended the nearly three week-long sit-in calling for an end to military rule. Protesters say the clashes began late Thursday night and continued Friday morning.

This video purports to show members of the security forces pelting protesters.

There are unconfirmed reports that the sisters of detained blogger Alaa Abd el Fattah were arrested.

Later Sharif Kouddous from Democracy Now tweeted:

Al-Jazeera reporter Evan Hill was briefly detained in Cairo after filming troops throwing rocks from the cabinet building, the network reports.

It said Hill's possessions including his passport and camera were confiscated.

These were Hill's last tweets before his arrest:

Just filmed military troops in fatigues throwing rocks from the roof of cabinet. One landed at my feet. #egypt Scene outside of #egypt's cabinet building right now, chucking rocks at army. yfrog.com/es91gwoj Someone just tossed a molotov into the ministry building next to cabinet. #egypt yfrog.com/mgghqotj

Some of those arrested in Cairo showed signs of being beaten according to Sharif Kouddous from Democracy Now. He tweeted this picture of a woman who had just been released.

Friday demonstrations have taken place across Syria.

In Idlib province thousands marched behind a manner which compared the killings in Syria to the Holocaust.

Large demonstrations were also filmed in Qamishli, in the north; Homs in the centre and Amouda.

More footage of the clashes outside the cabinet building in Cairo are being shown on the live streaming site Bambuser.

Activist Mosa'ab Elshamy tweets from the scene:

Rock throwing continues. One sided this time from protesters. Military police retreating down Asr el Eini. Intense rock throwing and molotov. It is the new Mohamed Mahmoud but with no CSF Fthis time. Yet. Clashes begin! some protesters hurled rocks at military police and got chased down Asr El Eini street. Many injured and arrested. Noor Ayman is out, face swollen and got some bruises but nothing serious.

Al-Jazeera's Evan Hill has posted an update on his own condition after being arrested and beaten in the clashes in Cairo.

I'm fine. Was detained in cabinet after being beaten by army and men in plainclothes during crackdown. Getting head injury checked at hosp

The slogan of today's demonstration in Syria is the "Arab league silence is killing us", al-Jazeera's Zeina Khodr reports.

In Homs protesters carried out a mock execution of the Assad family.

Mona Seif, one of Alaa Abd El Fattah's sisters who was arrested in Cairo today, is shown in this picture to be free.

Her finger is still ink-stained from voting in the elections.

Although the picture caption refers to her sister Sanaa Seif as being 'in custody', Mona has said on her Twitter feed that Sanaa is also free.



@Monasosh Mona Seif

she is wt me

Ahdaf Soueif, the Egyptian novelist and commentator, is the aunt of detained blogger Alaa Abd El Fattah, and also of his sisters, Mona and Sanaa, who were arrested and briefly detained this morning in Cairo.

She has sent us this picture of the moment Sanaa was released from detention.

AP has this round up of events in Syria:

Syrian security forces opened fire on anti-government protests after Friday prayers at several locations around the country while the army sent reinforcements into the tense south where military defectors have recently launched deadly attacks on regime troops. The Local Coordination Committees and the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said one person was killed in the shooting in the restive central city of Homs, and a man who was wounded in the southern province of Daraa earlier in the day died his wounds. The Observatory said more than 200,000 people marched in different neighborhoods of Homs, denouncing President Bashar Assad's regime. The turnout could not be confirmed as Syrian authorities have banned most journalists from covering events on the ground. The Observatory also reported shooting near a mosque in the eastern city of Deir el-Zour but it was unclear if there were casualties there. The LCC said anti-government rallies took place after Friday prayers all across Syria from Daraa to the suburbs of the capital Damascus, in Homs and Hama in the country's center, and to the north, in the city of Aleppo.

Activists have told Al-Arabiya TV that 14 people have been killed by the security forces in Syria today.

The activist group the Syrian Revolution General Commission reported the names of four people who died. The included a man and woman from Homs who died after being shot before today.

Here's a summary of events so far today:

Syria

• Up to 14 people have been killed by the security forces, according to reports, after another Friday of large protests across the country. Up to 200,000 people took to the streets in various demonstrations in Homs, according to Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

• The theme of the protests is anger at the ineffectiveness of the Arab League to stop the crackdown. The League has postponed a meeting due to take place this weekend to discuss how to deal with the crisis.

• The EU and the US have given a mixed response to a surprise draft UN resolution tabled by Russia. The draft contains no reference to sanctions and condemns violence on both sides. Russia's ambassador to the UN, claimed extremists were using protesters as human shields.

• More than 100 soldiers have switched to the opposition Free Syrian Army in Idlib, according to the latest defection video. It came after reports that defected soldiers killed 27 members of the security services in the southern province of Deraa.

Egypt

• Violence has erupted in Cairo after soldiers stormed a protest to occupy the cabinet building and were filmed throwing rocks at protesters. The clashes occurred while votes were still being counted in the second round of Egypt's parliamentary elections.

• Several people were briefly arrested including Evan Hill, a reporter for al-Jazeera, and Mona and Sanaa Seif, the sisters of the detained blogger Alaa Abd El Fattah. Hill said he had head injuries after being beaten by the police. Activists also posted a photograph of woman who appeared to have been beaten.

• Former UN weapons inspector and possible presidential candidate Mohamed ElBaradei condemned the violence. "If the sit-in broke the law, isn't the cruelty and brutality used to break it up a greater violation of all human rights laws? This is not how nations are managed," he on his Twitter account.

Bahrain

• The Bahrain Centre for Human Rights has launched an appeal for the release of activist Zainab Alkhawaja and Masooma al-Sayed after they were arrested yesterday. Alkhawaja, who blogs under the name Angry Arab, was filmed as she was arrested and punched by a police woman.

• Shia activists have vowed to rebuild mosques destroyed by the security forces during pro-democracy protests. Residents of Nuwaidrat village, south of the Bahraini capital Manama, were already busy removing some of the rubble, Deutsche Presse Agentur reports.

Egyptian soldiers appear to have been urinating on protesters in Cairo, according to this photograph (via @blakehounsell)

The chairman of Libya's National Transitional Council has urged the regime of Bashar al-Assad to step down.

Speaking a development conference in Poland, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil said:

We would like to tell the Syrian regime to step down and let the Syrian people decide their own destiny. If the Syrian people are willing to choose Assad, then let it be.

Meanwhile, footage of large demonstrations in Syria continues to emerge.

In the north west city of Idlib, thousands of people marched behind people holding up letters spelling out the word 'Peaceful'.

The crackdown has also continued. The Local Coordination Committees in Syria said 14 people have been killed including two children.

Riot police were deployed in force in central Damascus, according to this clip.

Sanaa Seif one of the two younger sisters of detained blogger Alaa Abd El Fattah, emerged from police custody with a cut to the head and bruising, her aunt has told the Guardian.

A her sister Mona, was unharmed, according to to Ahdaf Soueif, the novelist and commentator.

Mona had been let out first and then Sanaa was let out. Sanaa has slight cut to the head and some bruising. The other girls who were let out had been very badly beaten

.

Soueif expressed concern over the fact that Samira Ibrahim, the woman who has taken legal action against the military authorities over the so-called 'virginity tests' , was among those detained.

Reports say Ibrahim - who Soueif said has become "a total heroine" in Egypt since the scandal earlier this year- has since been released from detention.

The circumstances for Mona, 24, and 17-year-old Sanaa's arrests remain unclear and Soueif said she had not yet spoken directly to them.

But it appears the detentions sprung from the women's involvement in the clashes which broke out overnight between protesters occupying the Cairo Cabinet Offices and riot police.

The elder sister had taken an injured young man to hospital and was attempting to have him treated and his case recorded, Soueif said.

Mona and a colleague...were...insisting that the whole thing be recorded and the police report filed and, of course, as usual the hospital authorities were refusing to do that. So that's the argument that was happening while the boy was being tended to by doctors.





Meanwhile at the site of the clashes, Sanaa had arrived with her mother, Laila.

Sanaa was in the thick of it with her friends and everybody else, essentially really trying to find some peace because we all felt that the protesters were going to get decimated.

Later in the morning, Cairo time, Soueif started to receive text messages and calls asking if her nieces had been arrested. By the time she checked, they had both been released.

The two have both been intimately involved in the revolution, Soueif said.

Sanaa is...actually even too young to vote in this revolution that she's worked so hard for. She's just finished high school and she's applied for the Higher Institute for Cinema. The revolution was really her first involvement in politics, which is remarkable given how into politics her family is, and her first revolutionary act, if you like, was on the 2nd February...She found a place to hide in Tahrir in an apartment and there she met a lot of other young people and out of that meeting...they produced the first actual not virtual newspaper of the revolution.

Mona, meanwhile, is a graduate of Cairo university's faculty of science who has spear-headed a campaign against civilians being put on military trials. Soueif said: "She's been a thorn in the side of the military."

Soueif said the family was "relieved" by the release of 27 detainees connected to the Maspero violence, even though Alaa, her nephew, remained in prison.

We always said that the issue is not Alaa, the issue is all the young people who are detained under military orders. So in fact we are really relieved that the 27 have been released because at least Alaa, he has the family behind him, he has a huge amount of support in the country and he has a lot of back-up. A lot of these young people don't so we're really glad they have been released and it's a step in the right direction.

Police used teargas to break up the funeral of Bahraini protester who was run over by the police on Thursday.

Ali al-Kassab, 17, was killed in Abu Saiba near the capital, Manama in a security crackdown that injured 12 others, according to reports.

His funeral sparked a further crackdown, according to activists. Pictures showed teargas being deployed near his grave. One injured mourner was shown being carried at the scene.

At the same time, King Hamad delivered a speech to mark Bahrain's day, in which he pledged commitment to reform and tolerance.

The state news agency quoted him saying:

The Kingdom of Bahrain will remain a state of law and institutions and a country of freedom and tolerant coexistence between different religions, cultures and ideas. Such openness will remain, God willing, the basic characteristic of our people and our institutions, and we will all endeavor to preserve it by ensuring pluralism in all areas of public life. We are confident that the next few days will reflect the true picture of the situation in our country.

The Telegraph has obtained footage of the Free Syrian Army attacking the regular army in the north west province of Idlib.

It says at least one fighter was killed in the assault, which took place on Monday.

Syrian activists now claim 17 people have been killed by the security forces today. Once again Homs, saw the worst violence with nine deaths, according to the Local Coordination Committees in Syria.

Three also died in Hama.

Despite the violence and reports of street battles yesterday this was the scene in Helfaya area of Hama.

Here's a summary of today's events

Syria

• Up to 17 people have been killed by the security forces, according to reports, after another Friday of large protests across the country. Up to 200,000 people took to the streets in various demonstrations in Homs, according to Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Significant demonstrations were also film in Hama and Idlib.

• The theme of the protests is anger at the ineffectiveness of the Arab League to stop the crackdown. The League has postponed a meeting due to take place this weekend to discuss how to deal with the crisis.

• The EU and the US have given a mixed response to a surprise draft UN resolution tabled by Russia. The draft contains no reference to sanctions and condemns violence on both sides. Russia's ambassador to the UN, claimed extremists were using protesters as human shields.

• More than 100 soldiers have switched to the opposition Free Syrian Army in Idlib, according to the latest defection video. It came after reports that defected soldiers killed 27 members of the security services in the southern province of Deraa.

Egypt

• Violence has erupted in Cairo after soldiers stormed a protest to occupy the cabinet building and were filmed throwing rocks at protesters. The clashes occurred while votes were still being counted in the second round of Egypt's parliamentary elections.

• Several people were arrested including Evan Hill, a reporter for al-Jazeera, and Mona and Sanaa Seif, the sisters of the detained blogger Alaa Abd El Fattah. Hill and Sanaa Seif were among dozens of people injured in the clashes. By early afternoon, troops were trying to disperse around 10,000 protesters with truncheons and what witnesses said appeared to be cattle prods that they used to give electric shocks to some of the demonstrator, AP reported.

• Former UN weapons inspector and possible presidential candidate Mohamed ElBaradei condemned the violence. "If the sit-in broke the law, isn't the cruelty and brutality used to break it up a greater violation of all human rights laws? This is not how nations are managed," he on his Twitter account.

Bahrain

• The Bahrain Centre for Human Rights has launched an appeal for the release of activist Zainab Alkhawaja and Masooma al-Sayed after they were arrested yesterday. Alkhawaja, who blogs under the name Angry Arab, was filmed as she was arrested and punched by a police woman.

• Police used teargas to break up the funeral of a teenage activist killed on Thursday. While the crackdown was taking place King Hamad claimed his country was committed to tolerance.

• Shia activists have vowed to rebuild mosques destroyed by the security forces during pro-democracy protests. Residents of Nuwaidrat village, south of the Bahraini capital Manama, were already busy removing some of the rubble, Deutsche Presse Agentur reports.

At least two protesters were shot to death in those clashes earlier on in Cairo, according to reports.

The Associated Press has some more details of the storming of the protest camp outside Egypt's Cabinet building where soldiers beat women with sticks and chunks of concrete and glass were hurled onto protesters from the roof.

At least two protesters were shot to death in the clashes, an activist who saw their bodies said. The heavy-handed assault was an attempt to clear out protesters who have been camped out in front of the building for three weeks demanding the ruling military leave power. But the mayhem which came despite promises from the army-appointed prime minister that no one would try to clear the protesters by force threatened to spark a new round of violence after deadly clashes between youth revolutionaries and security forces in November that lasted for days and left more than 40 dead. Several women protesters cowered on the pavement as military police beat them with truncheons and long sticks. Another woman was seen bring dragged away by her hair by soldiers. Plainclothes and uniformed security officers were seen throwing slabs of concrete and stones on protesters from atop the parliament building, according to state TV footage and videos and photos posted by protesters on social networking sites. Protesters threw fire bombs and rocks at the security officers, lighting a part of parliament on fire and chanting "Down with the military."

"It's pretty ironic that the military is throwing rocks at protesters from the parliament building, where a sign is hanging that says democracy is the power of the people," protester Mostafa Sheshtawy said. Hours after sunset, the crowds of protesters had grown to hundreds and clashes continued, with youths hiding behind a makeshift barrier of metal sheets and an overturned car, throwing volleys of stones at military police lined up in the broad avenue in front of the parliament and Cabinet headquarters.

An official at the Egyptian Health Ministry official confirmed one of the deaths, a man in his 20s who was shot in the head with live ammunition.

A state news agency also said at least 99 people were injured, including some with broken bones and gunshot wounds.

A worker at a makeshift field hospital in Cairo has told Reuters that a third person died from gunshot wounds.

The news agency describes the earlier violence as the worst since Egypt began its elections

Some news now from Libya which is particularly timely ahead of a visit to Tripoli tomorrow by the US Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta.

The chief of Libya's army ground forces has told my colleague Chris Stephen and other journalists that one of his sons has been kidnapped by members of a militia who also shot and wounded another son yesterday in the town of Zintan.

Speaking in Turkey today, Panetta said that Libya will need more time to control its militias.

"The last thing you want to do is to try to impose something on a country that has just gone through what the Libyans have gone through," said Panetta.

"They've earned the right to try to determine their future. They've earned the right to try to work their way through the issues that they're going to have to confront," he said.

Recent skirmishes between revolutionary fighters and national army troops near Tripoli's airport has reflected the difficulties that Libya's new leaders face as they try to forge an army, integrating some of the militias and disarming the rest.

A fire has been raging for more than half an hour now at the transport ministry offices in Cairo, which caught fire during today's clashes.

Activist Shahira Abouellail tweets:

The guy next to me throwing molotov set himself on fire due to proximity to buildng, hes been taken 2 hosp

More from Chris Stephen on the claim by Libya's highest ranking military officer that his son has been kidnapped and is being held at the city's international airport by militia:

General Khalifa Heftar, the ground forces commander of the nascent Libyan national army, said his son Begasim was kidnapped by gunmen as he drove to see his brother, who was himself wounded in fighting with militias on Thursday. "My son is kidnapped, he was kidnapped today, he is being held at the airport," he said. The international airport is held by a militia from Zintan, 90 miles south-west of the city, who last weekend skirmished with Heftar's forces when they tried to pass the main airport checkpoint, briefly closing the airport to international flights. Dozens of armed men in jeeps have been gathering at Heftar's walled fortified compound in Tripoli. "We have been making phone calls with them [the kidnappers] this evening, I don't know what they want." The reported kidnapping comes on the eve of a visit to Libya by the US defence secretary, Leon Panetta, who said in Turkey on Friday that the US must give Libya more time to gain control of its militias. Four months after revolutionary forces captured Tripoli and swept the regime of Muammar Gaddafi from power, Libya remains a patchwork of competing militias. Heftar blamed isolated armed groups for the kidnapping. "There is no problem with the Zintanis. But there are groups, elements that are very bad. I do not know what they want." Zintani militia on duty at the airport made no mention of the kidnapping earlier in the day, and insisted they had the support of Libya's defence minister, Osama Jewli, himself a Zintani. "We have the authority to be here," said Zintan fighter Khalid Al Akraj.

Early results emerging from the second round of the Egyptian elections suggest another strong performance Islamists, according to local reports.

After counting began late on Thursday, the Egypt Independent (an English-language weekly) reports:

Overall counts for party list-based seats showed the Democratic Alliance list, led by the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justicy Party (FJP) taking the most votes, followed by the Egyptian Bloc, Nour Party, Revolution Continues Coalition (RCC) and Wasat Party lists. Initial counts in Giza's third constituency, however, showed independent candidate for the professional single-winner seat Amr el-Shobaki surpassing the FJP-backed candidate. In the same district, the FJP candidate for the worker single-winner seat was just ahead of his opponent, Essam Bahei Eddin. Observers believe these results will necessitate a run-off election for single-winner seats in the third constituency. Supporters of the now-defunct National Democratic Party sparked disturbances after hearing the initial results, chanting against Shobaki and FJP candidates. The military intervened to contain the situation.

A year has passed since Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation in a sleepy Tunisian town kicked off a year of revolt, or what many called the Arab Spring.

For the anniversary of the Arab spring, Jack Shenker in Cairo, along with Shiv Malik in London and Adam Gabbatt in New York, have been looking at how the largely youth-led revolt went global:

With the ability to build horizontal links using new technologies, a generation decided this year not to passively embark on a pre-programmed conveyor belt of life under austerity, oppression – or both – but instead opted to come together and attempt an audacious reclamation of autonomy. Nowhere was this more true than in the Middle East, where Bouazizi's immolation set off an inferno that is still smouldering. On Friday in Cairo, as demonstrators and police again clashed violently, it was as clear as ever that there is plenty of unfinished business in this youth uprising. "The Arab world was considered a stagnant pond of retardation and tyranny, inhabited by what appeared to be a complacent populace toiling fatalistically under the yoke of their dictators," says Iyad el-Baghdadi, compiler of the canonical Arab Tyrant's Manual. "Most observers thought this status quo to be stable, if not permanent," adds el-Baghdadi. "What's worst, many Arabs thought so too. Boy, look at us now." When you speak to those organising the Occupy movement, it is remarkable how important Tunisia and Tahrir were to their own action. No longer was the west to be a democratic beacon to the Middle East. It was very much the other way around. "Who would have thought that Mohamed Bouazizi would set in motion such a series of events?" says David Osborn from the Occupy Portland movement. He says that many in the west were "deeply moved and inspired" by seeing protests across the Middle East, but that Egypt in particular had captured Americans' imagination.

Again to mark the anniversary of the Arab spring, the Guardian's Ermine Saner has been asking the French-Algerian journalist Nabila Ramdani and the Syrian writer and broadcaster Rana Kabbani what the uprising meant for women across the region.

You can read a transcript of their discussions here.

The UN Security Council has lifted sanctions on Libya's central bank and a subsidiary, reports Reuters.

It clears the way for their overseas assets to be unfrozen to ease a cash crisis, a council diplomat told the news agency.

The Central Bank of Libya and the Libyan Foreign Bank (LFB), an offshore institution wholly owned by the central bank, were taken off the council's sanctions list drawn up earlier this year during the war in Libya.

In London, the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, welcomed the move.

In a statement released tonight, he said: "It means that Libya's government will now have full access to the significant funds needed to help rebuild the country, to underpin stability and to ensure that Libyans can make the transactions that are essential to everyday life."

"The UK has led the way in securing the release of these assets. We are now working to ensure that the EU will respond swiftly to this UN decision and will pass the regulation required to release about £6.5 billion frozen in the UK.

An Egyptian blogger who writes as Egyptocracy has been tweeting from outside the cabinet building in Cairo, :

Blasting flames now from roads and transportation authority building. 12.50am. Dec17. #OccupyCabinet

This is the picture she tweeted:

_

A New York Times report on the fighting today in Cairo says that the clashes have injected an unpredictable new variable into a looming confrontation between the military council and the incoming Parliament over control of the transitional government and the drafting of a new constitution.

The newspaper adds that election monitors also raised concerns about violence at the ballot counting centres:



"The fact that the problems in the counting centers seems to have become worse rather than better is not a good sign," said Les Campbell, who is overseeing the election monitoring for the National Democratic Institute. "There were already tremendous problems in the first round." He noted that the renewed violence in the streets could threaten the integrity of the election results as well. "The atmosphere today does not sound conducive to the peaceful choosing of one's leader," he said. "A running battle in the street, even if it is not affecting you directly, has an influence on the state of mind of voters and their feeling of security and whether they feel like the election is being conducted in a proper manner."

The blog is being wrapped up now. A summary from earlier about the events of the day around the region can be viewed here.