Al Jazeera's signal across the Middle East and North Africa was plagued by jamming on Sunday, the Arab satellite broadcaster said, and Lebanon said the electronic interference was coming from Libya. Al Jazeera, whose coverage of the regional political unrest has been widely watched in the Arab world, first reported jamming on Friday and said its website had been blocked in Libya.

"We believe that whoever is doing this is operating with sophisticated and large equipment," an Al Jazeera spokesman said in a statement. In Beirut, Lebanese Telecommunications Minister Charbel Nahhas said the jamming "originated from Libyan territory" and it was also affecting Lebanese channels. "They (Libyans) see what these televisions carry about what is happening in their country and they jam the transmission points so Al Jazeera is affected and we are affected too," Nahhas told Reuters.

There was no immediate response from Libya, where tens of thousands gathered in the city of Benghazi on Sunday for funerals of protesters killed by security forces as Human Rights Watch said overnight violence had doubled the death toll from four days of clashes to 173.

Copyright Reuters, 2011