Moammar Gaddafi stepped up a crackdown on protesters in several eastern Libyan cities (AP)

Libyan special forces have stormed a two-day-old protest encampment in the country's second largest city, clearing the area, witnesses said.

Access to the internet was also cut at around 2am local time on Saturday removing one of the few ways Libyans can get out information about the waves of anti-government protests in one of the most isolated and repressive nations in North Africa.

At 5am, special forces attacked hundreds of protesters, including lawyers and judges, camped out in front of the court building in the eastern city of Benghazi, which has been a focus for the anti-government unrest.

"They fired tear gas on protesters in tents and cleared the areas after many fled carrying the dead and the injured," one protester said over the phone from Benghazi.

"This is a ghost city, we are all afraid that something big is going to happen in Benghazi today."

Tehran, Iran (CNN) — The United States is urging the Iranian government to halt executions after Tehran hanged a Dutch-Iranian woman, saying she was a drug smuggler.

The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran has said the drug charges were only a pretext to execute Zahra Bahrami, and the Netherlands froze all ties with Iran on Sunday, a day after the hanging.

On Monday, the U.S. State Department said it was “deeply concerned that Iran continues to deny its citizens their human rights.”

“Judicial cases, trials, and sentences continue to proceed without transparency and the due process rights enshrined in Iran’s own constitution,” it said.

The department said it was especially troubled by Bahrami’s execution, saying she was denied access to Dutch consular officials.

“Her execution is one of dozens carried out in recent weeks amid serious questions about the motives of the Iranian government,” it said.

BRUSSELS, January 30, 2011 (AFP) – President of the European Parliament Jerzy Buzek on Sunday denounced Iran’s hanging of a Iranian-Dutch woman arrested after anti-government protests in 2009 then convicted of drug trafficking.

“The hanging of Sarah Bahrami, who was a Dutch and hence a European citizen, is a cowardly act of arbitrary justice,” he said in a statement.

“The European Union condemns the death penalty in principle as a violation of human dignity, but the case of Sarah Bahrami is particularly gruesome.

“She was arrested during the protests against the perverted presidential elections in December 2009,” he continued.

Soon after the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June 2009, tens of thousands of opposition supporters took to the streets of Tehran alleging that the poll had been was rigged.

“The allegations put forward against her afterwards are more than dubious,” Buzek added.

By FARNAZ FASSIHI

Egypt’s uprising has captivated the Arab world, but in Iran—fresh from its own outpouring of antigovernment unrest—backers of the regime and supporters of the beleaguered opposition are competing for credit for inspiring the demonstrations in Cairo.

Protests in Egypt calling for the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak have also reinvigorated Iran’s opposition, triggering calls to regroup. After contested presidential polls in the summer of 2009, hundreds of thousands of Iranians poured onto the streets to protest the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, amid allegations of voter fraud.

Iranian government forces snuffed out the demonstrations with violence, mass arrests, the suspension of Internet and phone service and broad intimidation. The streets of Tehran and most other Iranian cities have been mostly quiet since early last year.

But on Sunday, the main student activist website, Daneshjoo News, issued a statement calling for a big opposition demonstration on the anniversary of the Islamic Republic on Feb. 12th. Bloggers also are calling on opposition leaders to rejoin the fray.

The Third Committee of the United Nation has approved a draft resolution condemning the Islamic Republic for human rights violations.

Reuters reports that General Assembly’s Third Committee, which is also referred to as the Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee, passed the resolution 80-44 with 57 abstaining last night in New York.

The resolution was drafted with the support of the US, the EU and Canada could be adopted next month.

New York - Human Rights Watch and a number of other international and Iranian groups have issued the following statement seeking action by the United Nations General Assembly in light of the human rights crisis that continues to unfold in Iran:

 In the light of the severity of the human rights situation in Iran, the Iranian authorities' refusal to cooperate with existing international human rights mechanisms, and their rejection of many specific recommendations from member states under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the Human Rights Council, Amnesty International, Democracy Coalition Project, Human Rights Watch, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, and the International Federation for Human Rights and its affiliate, the Iranian League for the Defence of Human Rights, call on the United Nations General Assembly to:

Kabul, Afghanistan

Iranian authorities have arrested two Germans who entered Iran on tourist visas allegedly to interview the family of a woman sentenced to death by stoning.

The pair was arrested Sunday while talking to the lawyer and son of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, who Iranian authorities accuse of adultery. Ms. Ashtiani’s case has been the source of much international outrage and her sentence was suspended in July, but now Iranian officials are considering hanging her for the murder of her late husband, reports the BBC. Her lawyers insist she is innocent of all charges.