The battle to oust Gaddafi continues in Libya, while pro-democracy demonstrations are expected in many Middle East countries today, including Syria
Opposition forces in Libya push government troops towards the outskirts of the sprawling oil town of Brega in a slow advance west Photograph: guardian.co.uk
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11.30am - Egypt:
Egyptian troops have been warned they face prosecution if they join today's protest in Tahrir Square, CNN reports.
It says the warning comes after videos were posted on YouTube by men purporting to be officers in the Egyptian military publicly challenging the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.
Meanwhile, protesters in Tahrir Square have unfurled a Syrian flag in solidarity with pro-democracy campaigners there.
11.14am - Syria:
A spoof Twitter account mocking the Syrian president and his methods ahead of today's anticipated protests.
11.11am - Libya:
Nato has confirmed that its air strikes hit opposition fighters using tanks in their battle with the government forces in eastern Libya, but said it would not apologise for the deaths, reports AP.
Rear Admiral Russell Harding, the deputy commander of the Nato operation, said Nato had no previous information the rebels were operating tanks.
Nato jets attacked a rebel convoy between Brega and Ajdabiya on Thursday, killing at least five fighters and destroying or damaging a number of armoured vehicles.
Harding said that Nato jets had conducted 318 sorties and struck 23 targets across Libya in the past 48 hours. He said:
It would appear that two of our strikes yesterday may have resulted in (rebel) deaths. I am not apologising. The situation on the ground was and remains extremely fluid, and until yesterday we did not have information that (rebel) forces are using tanks.
11.01am - Yemen:
Protests in the Yemeni capital Sana'a could escalate today as splits emerge in the opposition, Tom Finn reports from the city.
There are 200,000 people now stationed outside Sana'a university. If the younger more frustrated protesters get their way and convince the others that they should march, then we may see an escalation today.
Inside the anti-goverment camp there is an increasing division between the youthful protesters who are saying 'we need to march if we want to get [president] Saleh out of power', and the members of opposition parties who are saying 'we don't need to see any more violence we just need to stay put'.
The political opposition has long been a divided bunch: Islamist, Socialists, and Nasserites, who have struggled to reach a consensus and over the last few years have gained very little out of political negotiations with the president. Now with all this unrest they suddenly have this new found power... They are not going to accept anything from the president unless he steps down and they get a decent stake in power.
On the Gulf Cooperation Council call for talks and for Saleh to step down under an immunity deal, Tom says:
On the streets that has gone down badly, especially at Sana'a university. The idea of the president and all of his relatives all getting off the hook... is infuriated for these young guys who are seeking justice.
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10.58am - Syria:
The Guardian's stringer in Damascus, Katherine Marsh (a pseudonym), reports on the background to today's protests and Assad's unsuccessful attempts to stem them with a series of concessions:
Demonstrations are expected across Syria again today - the fourth successive Friday week of protests against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Thousands are expected to gather in the southern city of Deraa and the Damascus suburb of Douma, where huge crowds gathered last week and at least 15 were shot dead. Numbers are likely to be bolstered by residents from surrounding towns and villages, some of which held their own protests yesterday.
The Kurdish town of Qamischli in the north-east is likely to see gatherings again this week despite a last ditch effort yesterday by president Bashar al-Assad to quell unrest by offering nationality to 200,000 Kurds currently classed as "foreigners".
Some Kurdish leaders have already rejected the move, expressing doubt that it would signify an end to decades-long political and cultural repression of Syria's largest non-Arab ethnic minority, about 10 percent of Syria's population.
In a further round of what have become regular Thursday offers of minimal concessions, Assad fired the governor of Homs, another city likely to stage protests again today. Earlier this week he reversed a ban on niqab-clad teachers in schools and closing a casino in an apparent attempt to appease conservative Muslims. "He is reaching out to everyone but the people protesting" said an activist in Damascus. "This is causing unrest to grow." No announcement has yet been made on lifting the 48-year-old emergency law – a central demand of protesters.
Katherine says although security forces are reported to have withdrawn to the edge of some towns leaving them semi-autonomous, this has happened in preceding weeks, before forces have moved back in to quell protests on Fridays - with the use of lethal force. And she says that opposition attempts to widen the protests have been unsuccessful so far.
In an attempt to up pressure on Assad, activists have been trying to mobilise crowds in central Damascus and the northern town of Aleppo, but so far with little success. Human rights organisations and diplomats say they are watching today closely after what happened in Douma last Friday.
Syrian anti-government protesters in Qamischli last Friday. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
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10.41am - Libya:
Gaddafi's troops advanced on Misrata's eastern districts on today, triggering street-battles with rebels in the coastal city that forced residents to flee the area, an opposition spokesman told Reuters. Hassan al-Misrati said:
"They tried to advance and enter the city from the eastern side, from an area called Eqseer which is a populated area. The rebels confronted them and clashes are continuing."
Meanwhile, the UN's children agency has said snipers are targeting children in Misrata, AP reports.
UNICEF spokeswoman Marixie Mercado told reporters in Geneva the organisation has received "reliable and consistent reports of children being among the people targeted by snipers in Misrata".
She was unable to say how many children have been wounded or killed by snipers in Libya's third-largest city.
10.34am - Syria:
Photograph: AP
As in Yemen there are international fears as to the void that would be left if President Bashar Assad is toppled in Syria but hostility to him is growing, says the Economist:
Although he is still more likely to opt for repression over rapid reform, as a cycle of protests, funerals and arrests take hold, nobody knows whether he will ride out the trouble or be swept away by it....
Much will depend on the silent majority of Syria's 22m people, especially its leading businessmen and clerics. So far, governments in the region have sounded sympathetic towards Mr Assad. Qatar's foreign minister, in the forefront of opposition to Libya's Muammar Qaddafi, visited Mr Assad as an apparent gesture of support. Al Jazeera, the influential Qatar-based satellite television channel, has infuriated Syria's protesters by giving them less airtime or credence than demonstrators in other Arab countries. Western governments, for their part, are wary of what might fill the vacuum if Mr Assad's regime fell. But if the protests persist, especially if they get bloodier, the momentum for radical change could quickly resume.
10.29am - Yemen:
Dexter Filkins, in the New Yorker, has written an extensive account of the protests in Yemen and fears that anarchy will reign if President Saleh is deposed:
As officials in both Washington and Sanaa repeatedly reminded me, Yemen is not Egypt: it has virtually no middle class, a weak civil society, a marginal intelligentsia, and no public institutions that operate independently of Saleh. The Yemeni opposition includes notable Islamists, among them Abdul Majeed al-Zindani, a cleric whom the U.S. has designated a terrorist.
A Western diplomat in Yemen said, "O.K., fine, Saleh goes. Then what do you do? There is no institutional capacity—in the bureaucracy, in the military, or in any other institutions in this society—to really step in and pick up the pieces and manage a transition." A failed state in Yemen, coupled with an already anarchic situation in Somalia, could provide Islamist militants with hundreds of miles of unguarded coastline, disrupting the shipping lanes that run from the Suez Canal to the Indian Ocean.
The senior Administration official put it bluntly: "Our goal is to help prevent a coup or a usurpation of power by Muslim Brotherhood types or by Al Qaeda."
10.14am - Egypt:
Around 3,000 Egyptians are protesting in Cairo's Tahrir Square on the "Friday of cleansing" reports AP:
About 3,000 Egyptians are protesting in Cairo's central Tahrir Square holding banners and signs demanding prosecution of ousted president Hosni Mubarak and his regime.
One speaker in the square has vowed, "We are not leaving here until Mubarak is on trial," as the crowd chants, "The people want to try the deposed president."
Activists have called for a large gathering Friday to push for prosecutions of key members of the former regime, including Mubarak and his family, who are now under house arrest at a presidential palace in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
10.03am - Libya:
Four foreign journalists are still missing four days after being snatched in the frontline Libyan town of Brega, Chris McGreal reports from Benghazi.
The four, including James Foley from the Global Post, were taken at gunpoint by Gaddifi's forces who emerged from the desert earlier this week. Chris says:
In terms of the tactics of actually snatching them, it is a bit of a first. This is unusual in terms of taking reporters, however Gaddifi's forces have been using these tactics against the rebels. The question now is what has happened to them and where they are. It has been four days. Previously when reporters have been arrested by Gaddafi's forces it took three or four days for them to pop up in Tripoli. It is those three or four days that are crucial."
On claims that a Nato air strike yesterday killed a number of rebels, Chris says:
"The rebels on the ground said it was an air strike that hit tanks that had been deployed to the frontline for the first time. These are tanks that were seized from Gadaffi so from the air they would have been indistinguishable. Communications have been quite bad between the rebels on the ground and Nato, so it was quite possible that the pilot was unaware that the rebels had tanks or that they had moved them to the frontline. The rebel leadership tried to claim this was a result of an attack by Gaddafi's airforce. That seemed unlikely partly because of the no-fly zone ...
The mood here is quite anti-Nato at the moment. After yesterday's strike it is not merely seen as an accident by many people. Some people are starting to see some kind of conspiracy. The rebel leadership is quite concerned at the idea that Nato becomes isolated and criticised, because they are relying on it very heavily."
On the Turkish peace plan, Chris says:
"Elements of it the rebels will welcome. The rebels not only want Gaddafi's forces out of the cities but free political activity. The problem the rebels will have is that it does not require an immediate departure of Gaddafi and his family from power."
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9.58am - Syria:
There was a "warm-up" protest on Thursday in Douma for planned larger demonstrations today, the New York Times reports:
A midday march in the centre of Douma drew about 2,000 people, said Wissam Tarif, a human rights activist who was in the town on Thursday. Several thousand more came to pay their respects to the families of those killed, including a delegation of several hundred students from Damascus University. Mr Tarif said many of those in Douma appeared to have come from outside the city.
Ammar Abdulhamid, a Syrian novelist and opposition figure who now lives in Maryland and has helped young activists in Syria to organize, said that security forces had largely withdrawn from the towns where the largest protests had taken place. Inside the security cordon that now surrounds Dara'a, where Syria's popular protests first began three weeks ago, the town itself has become "semiautonomous," he said.
Dara'a, Baniyas and several Damascus suburbs are effectively under the control of the residents, Mr Abdulhamid said. "We used to call them the poverty belt, and now we call them the revolution belt," he said of the towns surrounding Damascus, the capital.
9.53am: Good morning. Welcome to the Guardian's live coverage of events in the Middle East.
The battle to oust Muammar Gaddafi rages on in Libya. Meanwhile ordinary people throughout the Middle East continue to protest for democratic reform but authoritarian rulers continue to resist change and to use violence to crackdown on peaceful demonstrations. Here's a summary of the latest developments:
Libya
Turkey has proposed a peace plan it is taking to Gaddafi. The plan consists of a ceasefire in the cities surrounded by Gaddafi's forces, a humanitarian corridor and negotiations leading to a new political process including free elections.
Four foreign journalists have been taken prisoner in Libya. They were taken while reporting on the outskirts of Brega. They are James Foley from the Global Post, Clare Morgana Gillis, an American freelance journalist, Manu Brabo, a Spanish photographer, and Anton Hammerl, a South African photographer.
Syria
Large pro-reform demonstrations are expected in Syria, including in Douma, a suburb of Damascus where 15 people were killed by security forces during protests last Friday.
Egypt
Protesters are already heading to Tahrir Square, the heart of the revolution, in another demonstration intended to ensure that the reforms they fought for are delivered. They are calling it a "Friday of cleansing".
Yemen
Protests against the regime of President Ali Abdullah Saleh continue. The six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, has joined international voices calling for Saleh to stand down. It has presented Saleh and opposition parties with a proposal for the transfer of power and invited both sides to Riyadh to discuss the plan.
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