French ambassador to Syria Eric Chevallier has returned to Damascus more than two weeks after being recalled in response to the Syrian government's crackdown on dissent, the embassy said on Friday.

"I can confirm that the ambassador of France returned to Damascus on Thursday night," a spokesman told Agence France Presse.

Israeli warplanes launched two air strikes on the Gaza Strip early Friday, the military said; hours after Palestinian militants fired two rockets at southern Israel.

"Israeli army aircraft thwarted an attempt by a terrorist squad to fire rockets at Israel from the northern Gaza Strip," an army statement said.

The U.N. named its former leader Kofi Annan as special envoy for Syria on the eve of an international conference Friday aimed at pressuring the Assad regime to halt the rising spiral of violence.

Amid international outrage over the deaths of two Western journalists and reports of intensified shelling of civilians, Annan was called on to represent both the U.N. and the Arab League in ending "violence and human rights violations, and promoting a peaceful solution to the Syrian crisis," the two bodies said in a statement Thursday.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the Syrian National Council will demonstrate at international talks in Tunis on Friday that there is an alternative to President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

"We believe that the Syrian National Council, which will be there sitting at the table, will show that there is an alternative to the Assad regime, one that respects the rights of all Syrians," she told reporters in London on Thursday.

Seven Syrian activists collaborating with the Avaaz action group were found "executed" in Homs, while two others, including a foreigner, remain missing, the non-governmental organization said Thursday.

The group of nine men, including one foreign paramedic, had set off on foot for Baba Amr on Wednesday morning after hearing that two foreign journalists were killed in the flashpoint district of Homs, said Avaaz's Alex Renton.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his rival Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal on Thursday postponed talks on forming a unified government, a Fatah official said, in a further delay to ending an almost five-year rift.

The official with the Abbas-led party said the talks were postponed "because Hamas continues to prevent the election committee from registering voters in Gaza," the Islamist-ruled Palestinian territory.

Russia and China on Thursday rejected pressure to change their position on Syria after vetoing a United Nations resolution condemning the Damascus regime for its bloody crackdown on the opposition.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi to discuss the two powers' future strategy on the crisis, less than a month after the U.N. Security Council vote.

Syrian regime forces killed 63 people and pounded rebel districts of the flashpoint central city of Homs for a 20th straight day on Thursday.

Seventeen unidentified bodies, 10 children, a media activist and a dissident soldier were among the 63 victims, the Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said.

A French reporter who was wounded in the Syrian city of Homs said Thursday she needs urgent medical attention and asked to be evacuated quickly, in a video posted online by anti-regime activists.

Edith Bouvier, a reporter for the French daily Le Figaro, made the appeal in the footage, sitting alongside French photojournalist William Daniels, who said he was not wounded but also keen to be extracted urgently.

An eventual fall of Syria's regime, followed by the rise of an Islamist government could create a quandary for Jordan, a small country that has strategic ties with its northern neighbor, analysts say.

At the same time, even if Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime survives pro-democracy protests against his 11-year rule, relations between Amman and Damascus are unlikely to improve, at least in the short term.