China on Friday criticized a lawsuit in Spain against former Chinese president Hu Jintao over allegations of human rights abuses in Tibet.

"Tibet is an inseparable part of China," foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a regular briefing, adding the region's affairs are a Chinese "domestic" matter.

Spain demanded Thursday that Gibraltar Chief Minister Fabian Picardo prove accusations he made at the United Nations that Spanish police had fired shots at a Gibraltarian man in the contested waters surrounding the British territory.

During an address to the United Nations in New York on Wednesday Picardo accused the Spanish government and the media of waging a "campaign of incitement to hatred through lies" against Gibraltar.

Gibraltar on Tuesday called on the United States to use its diplomatic heft to help end a bitter dispute over its sovereignty, accusing Spain of "bullying" the tiny British territory amid a flare-up of tensions.

"The United States must stand for the right of people to determine their own future," Gibraltar's head of government, Chief Minister Fabian Picardo said.

Spanish authorities on Monday rescued 10 African migrants crossing the Strait of Gibraltar in a rubber dinghy in another incident highlighting the perils of trying to enter Europe illegally, after last week's fatal shipwreck in Italian waters.

Rescue teams received a call in the morning from the dinghy transporting 10 men, all from sub-Saharan Africa, saying "they had left the Tangiers region (northern Morocco) at 1:00 am" local time, a spokesperson from the rescue services said.

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets Saturday in northern Spain to protest a crackdown on an association that aids jailed members of armed Basque separatist group ETA.

The protest in Bilbao came after police arrested 18 leaders of Herrira, a support group founded to help ETA prisoners and their families, in a series of raids on September 30.

Spain's jobless queues grew in September as a summer jobs boom ended, breaking a six-month run of shrinking unemployment lines, government figures showed Wednesday.

The number of people registered as unemployed rose by 25,572 people from the previous month to 4.72 million, the first increase since February, the Labor Ministry said.

Spanish police detained 18 leaders of an association that aids jailed members of the armed Basque separatist group ETA on Monday and froze its bank accounts, the interior ministry said.

The "top managers" of Herrira were detained in simultaneous raids carried out in the Basque cities of Hernani, Bilbao and Vitoria as well as in Pamplona in the Navarre region, which has a significant Basque-speaking population, it said in a statement.

Belgian police on Thursday arrested in a Brussels suburb a suspected a member of an al-Qaida-linked cell who is wanted by Spain.

The man identified as Ismail Abdelatif Al-Lal was arrested at his home "following a European arrest warrant" delivered by Spain, which accuses him of "participation in a criminal organization and terrorism," said Wenke Roggen, a spokesman for the Belgian federal prosecutor.

Argentina and Spain agreed Thursday to work together to persuade Britain to negotiate the future of the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar, Argentina said.

Both territories -- the Falklands in the South Atlantic, which Argentina calls the Islas Malvinas, and Gibraltar at Spain's southern tip -- are controlled by Britain.

Spain's 75-year-old King Juan Carlos should begin walking again with the aid of a walking frame on Thursday, two days after undergoing hip-replacement surgery, the hospital where he had his surgery said.

The king was recovering "better than expected" after a surgeon on Tuesday fitted a temporary replacement for an implant that had got infected, his eighth operation in just over three years, the Quiron Hospital in suburban Madrid said in a statement.