The Arab League mission sent to monitor unrest in Syria is unable to do its job properly, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said Friday.

"We support the Arab League which has sent observers to Syria but this mission is not at present able to do its job properly," Juppe said on the second day of a visit to Tunisia.

A Fatah delegation was on Friday prevented from entering the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip where they were to have held reconciliation talks with the Islamist movement, Fatah said.

The planned visit comes as Nabil Shaath, a member of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party's central committee, has been in Gaza since January 2 for talks with Hamas leaders and other Palestinian representatives on implementing a reconciliation deal.

A suicide bombing hit Damascus on Friday, killing 25 and wounding dozens of mostly civilians, state media said, blaming "terrorists" for the second such attack on the Syrian capital in two weeks.

But Syria's opposition Muslim Brotherhood called for an international and Arab probe into the bombing, saying it was an act benefitting the regime.

Rockets were fired against Baghdad's Green Zone as Iraq's military marked its anniversary with a parade Friday, a day after the country suffered its worst attacks since August and weeks after U.S. troops left.

In Baghdad, insurgents fired three rockets against the heavily-fortified Green Zone as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki presided over a huge military parade to mark the 91st anniversary of the founding of Iraq's armed forces.

U.N. human rights experts may train Arab League observers monitoring the Syrian government's deadly crackdown on opposition protests, a U.N. spokesman said Thursday.

The announcement came the day after Qatar's prime minister sought help from U.N. secretary general Ban Ki-moon, saying the Arab League mission in Syria had made "some mistakes".

Attacks against Shiite pilgrims in Baghdad on Friday killed two people, a day after Iraq suffered its worst violence in five months as it grappled with a political row that has stoked sectarian tensions.

The two bombs exploded in the morning on separate bridges in the Dura neighborhood of south Baghdad, an interior ministry official and a doctor at Yarmuk hospital said.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden called Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to discuss regional security, including Iraq's political crisis, the White House said Thursday.

The call followed up on Biden's visit to Turkey in December, and included an undertaking to work to support the rule of law and encourage democracy in the region, the White House said in a statement.

Israeli security authorities have arrested two Arab Israelis for allegedly abetting Palestinian militant movement Hamas, police told Agence France Presse on Thursday.

Spokeswoman Luba Samri said, following the lifting of a court-imposed gag order, that police and the Shin Bet internal security service last month arrested brothers Mohammed and Amir Asaad, from the village of Kfar Kana, near Nazareth.

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators held a "positive" first face-to-face meeting in more than 15 months and agreed to meet again on Friday, but cautioned that full-blown talks were still some way off.

"The talks and atmosphere were positive," Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh told reporters after Tuesday's talks in Amman between Israel's chief negotiator Yitzhak Molcho, his Palestinian counterpart Saeb Erakat and Palestinian negotiator Mohammed Shtayyeh.

A jobless man set himself afire Thursday in front of the main government office of the poor Tunisian province of Gafsa as three ministers visited the unemployment-hit area, local sources said.

The man was taken to hospital with severe burns and in a critical state, unionist Amar Amroussia said.