Jordan's health minister has said that two deaths in the kingdom from a SARS-like virus earlier this year which were confirmed by the World Health Organisation last week were isolated cases.

"Since April, the health ministry has not recorded any case of the coronavirus in Jordan," Abdullatif Wreikat said in comments carried by the official Petra news agency on Sunday.

International health officials have confirmed two more fatal cases of a mysterious respiratory virus in the Middle East.

The virus has so far sickened nine people and killed five of them. The new disease is a coronavirus related to SARS, which killed some 800 people in a global epidemic in 2003, and belongs to a family of viruses that most often causes the common cold.

Former premier and intelligence chief Ahmad Obeidat joined thousands of Jordanians on Friday to protest fuel price hikes, demanding regime reform and the resignation of Prime Minister Abdullah Nsur.

"The people want to reform the regime. We demand reform and change. Nsur, out before the people revolt," chanted the protesters led by Obeidat's National Reform Front which includes opposition Islamists.

Jordan must stop using a military tribunal to prosecute peaceful demonstrators after several were arrested this month for protesting at rising fuel prices, the Human Rights Watch said on Friday.

"Instead of respecting the right to peaceful protest, the Jordanian authorities are using what remains essentially a military court to punish civilians, including peaceful protesters," Joe Stork, HRW deputy Middle East director, said in a statement.

Jordan police said it arrested on Wednesday five Jordanian men, including a terror convict, for planning to infiltrate into neighboring Syria with automatic weapons.

"Police today raided a house in the border town of Torra and arrested five Jordanians and seized automatic weapons, including Kalashnikovs," a police statement said.

Jordan police said it arrested on Wednesday five Jordanian men, including a terror convict, for planning to infiltrate into neighboring Syria with automatic weapons.

"Police today raided a house in the border town of Torra and arrested five Jordanians and seized automatic weapons, including Kalashnikovs," a police statement said.

Significant welfare reform must be implemented across the Middle East and North Africa to satisfy the socio-economic demands of the Arab Spring, according to a World Bank-Gallup survey published on Tuesday.

Stronger "social safety nets" -- such as income support and temporary employment programs -- are needed in the region, where government fuel subsidies "benefit the non-poor to a much greater extent than the poor," it said.

Jordan on Sunday opened a Bahrain-funded school in the Zaatari refugee camp near the Syrian border that can take up to 4,000 students, a Jordanian official said.

Jordan's education ministry and the U.N. children's fund UNICEF jointly run the school, in which 3,400 Syrian refugees are currently enrolled and taught by Jordanian and Syrian teachers.

A Jordanian court on Sunday charged three members of the main opposition party -- the Muslim Brotherhood's political wing -- with incitement against the government during recent protests, a judicial source said.

The Islamic Action Front in response called for the immediate release of all prisoners detained in connection with the protests.

Hundreds of Jordanians protested on Friday against rising fuel prices and called for political and economic reform, an AFP photographer said.

Around 300 people, including Islamists and leftists, demonstrated in front the Grand Mosque in the center of Amman, chanting slogans that included calls for the government to step down.