Amman - Arab stock markets tumbled this week as panicked investors dumped shares to avert worse repercussions of the global recession despite steps taken by financial authorities to replenish liquidity shortages, financial analysts said Friday.

"Investors in the region are still suffering from psychological pressures and indirect impact of the global financial turmoil," Nizar Taher, chief of brokerage at the Jordan Ahli Bank, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Baghdad - Iraqi security sources killed an Iranian man on Thursday and arrested another after an armed struggle in Kut, south-east of Baghdad, a security source said.

The two men held Iranian nationalities, and were believed to have been in Iraq to conduct terrorist attacks, General Aziz Latif al- Emarah told the Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency.

Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) confiscated four machine guns from th two men. Kut is located some 180 kilometres south-east of Baghdad.

Investigations with the detainee are still underway, the ISF said.

Rabat, Morocco - Eleven pe

Sana'a, Yemen - At least nine people were killed and dozens were missing after floods from heavy rains hit eastern Yemen, officials said on Friday.

The officials told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that nearly 400 homes were destroyed in the south-eastern province of Hadhramout, some 900 kilometres from the capital Sana'a.

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh declared Hadhramout a disaster zone.

Governor Salem al-Khanbashi told the state radio that fatalities were reported from different areas of Hadhramout, but accurate figures could not be gathered owing to the difficulties of reaching all the affected areas.

Berlin  - French plans to take stakes in strategic industries and shut out big foreign investors were criticized Friday in Berlin, in a new sign of Franco-German discord.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy had unveiled his plans the previous day and urged other nations to copy France's protective measures against sovereign wealth funds.

Riga - There was a sting in the tail of this week's trading on the small Baltic stock exchanges Friday when prices dropped sharply in response to big falls on the world's main exchanges.

All three Baltic stock exchanges were down significantly at the close of trading, crushing hopes that the worst of the financial downturn might be over in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.