Tens were wounded when Egyptian police fired rubber bullets and tear gas in clashes with protesters on Saturday as they broke up a sit-in organized by people injured during the Arab Spring, triggering a heated skirmish.

"Down with Tantawi," protesters cried, referring to the country's military ruler Hussein Tantawi, as they lobbed rocks and whatever they could towards policemen who responded with heavy volleys of rubber bullets.

Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square on Friday for a mass rally aimed at pushing Egypt's military rulers to cede power 10 months after an uprising ousted Hosni Mubarak.

As general elections draw near -- the first polls since Mubarak was ousted in February -- protesters are demanding more control over the constitution the new parliament is set to draft and a shift to civilian rule.

Hundreds of Coptic Christians marching in Cairo on Thursday came under attack by assailants throwing stones and bottles and 25 people were lightly injured in subsequent clashes, a security official said.

They were marching to demand justice for the Christian victims of a clash with soldiers in October that left at least 25 people dead, most of them Christians.

Leaders of the world's biggest gas suppliers ended their first summit on Tuesday by reiterating the need for a fair gas price while Iran, whose president was absent, warned that Western taxation will derail the energy market.

The 12-member Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) expressed in a declaration they issued after the one-day summit "the need to reach a fair price for natural gas based on gas to oil ... prices indexation."

Egyptian security officials have arrested two more members of an Islamist group thought to be behind attacks on a pipeline supplying gas to Israel and Jordan, the official MENA agency reported Monday.

Abdel Karim Mohammed Ahmed and Ahmed Salem Awad of the radical Islamist al-Takfeer wal Hijra were detained during a sweep in the north Sinai town of el-Arish, a day after one of the group's leading members was held, said MENA.

A hapless Canadian tourist who was shot in a southern Egyptian family feud died on Saturday after an unsuccessful operation, the state-owned al-Ahram newspaper reported on its website.

The man, identified as Jean Francois, was shot when his taxi refused to stop at a checkpoint manned by villagers from al-Samata, who were looking for members of a rival clan, the report said.

Morocco opened its campaign for November 25 legislative elections Saturday, with moderate Islamists seen as possible winners and fears of a low turnout in the country's second vote this year.

In the last parliamentary elections in 2007 turnout was a mere 37 percent, a sign of Moroccans' lack of interest in public affairs.

An Egyptian pipeline delivering gas to Israel and Jordan was hit by two explosions Thursday, Egypt's security services and state media said, the seventh time it has been attacked by militants this year.

A first blast occurred around 1:00 am (23:00 GMT Wednesday) 40 kilometers west of the town of al-Arish in the north of the Sinai peninsula, a security source said.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton declared Monday that the Obama administration would work with ascendant Islamist parties of the Muslim world, answering one of the central U.S. policy questions resulting from the Arab Spring.

Delivering an address at the National Democratic Institute, Clinton offered a forthright embrace of the democratic changes enveloping North Africa and the Middle East at a time when the euphoria of the successful revolutions from Egypt to Libya is giving way to the hard and unprecedented work of creating stable democracies.

Rescue services evacuated 1,230 passengers onto life rafts from a burning ferry in the Red Sea on Thursday, with one Egyptian dying after jumping into the sea, Jordan's civil defense spokesman told Agence France Presse.

By afternoon, only the captain and three crew members remained aboard the stricken ship.