Around 50 Egyptian Christians suspected of trying to convert Muslims have been arrested in the eastern city of Benghazi on illegal immigration charges, a Libyan security official said on Friday.

"Forty-eight Egyptian traders who worked in the Benghazi municipal market have been arrested based on reports of suspect activities," the source told Agence France Presse.

Jihadist fighters of Al-Nusra Front have seized control of a checkpoint on northeast Syria's border with Iraq, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday.

The rebels overran the post at Yaarubiyeh in oil-rich Hassakeh province on Thursday after fierce clashes with government forces, the Britain-based Observatory said in a statement.

Russia said on Friday that decisions made at a Friends of Syria meeting in Rome this week, which saw the United States pledge direct aid to Syrian rebels, encouraged "extremists" who want to seize power by force.

"The decisions made in Rome as well as the statements, both in letter and spirit, give direct encouragement to extremists to take power by force, despite the unavoidable suffering of ordinary Syrians," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

U.S. and European decisions to back Syria's rebels with direct aid will only lead to more bloodshed and encourage "terrorism" in the war-torn country, a pro-Damascus daily said on Friday.

At a Friends of Syria meeting in Rome, Washington said on Thursday that it would provide the insurgents with non-lethal aid, while Brussels left the door open for a similar move and extended sanctions against the Damascus regime.

Israeli tank fire wounded three Palestinians near central Gaza's border with the Jewish state on Friday, a Palestinian medical official said.

"Three farmers, around 20 years of age, were moderately wounded by a tank shell and taken to Shifa hospital in Gaza City," health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra told Agence France Presse, adding the men had been working in fields east of east of El-Bureij refugee camp when they were hurt.

The Syrian opposition has accused government forces of having executed 72 people and burned their bodies in a village near the embattled northern city of Aleppo.

President Bashar Assad's "terrorist regime executed 72 people after a raid on Malkiyeh village near the town of Sfeira in the east of Aleppo province," the National Coalition charged in a statement issued Thursday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has banned settler housing tenders being issued for the West Bank and east Jerusalem when U.S. President Barack Obama visits this month, a daily said Friday.

Netanyahu had told officials the "suspension" did not amount to a freeze in settlement construction, and that it would only be in place up until the end of Obama's trip to avoid "embarrassing" leaders, Maariv newspaper reported.

Bombings in Iraq, including two car bombs at a sheep market, killed at least eight people and wounded dozens more on Friday, security and medical officials said.

Brigadier General Abdul Jalil al-Assadi, the police chief of Diwaniyah province, said the car bombs went off at about 7:30 am (0430 GMT) in the market, south of the province's capital of the same name.

The European Union on Thursday renewed wide-ranging sanctions against Syria's Bashar Assad but left the door open to providing technical assistance, including training, to the country's political opposition.

An amendment to the EU's sanctions, which will be renewed for three months from Friday, notably enables "the provision of technical assistance, brokering services and other services for the Syrian National Coalition for Opposition and Revolutionary Forces intended for the protection of civilians."

Libya's prime minister denied on Thursday reports that Moammar Gadhafi's imprisoned last premier is in a critical condition after being tortured in jail, saying al-Baghdadi al-Mahmudi is in "good health."

"Al-Baghdadi is in good health... and is being treated humanely," Prime Minister Ali Zeidan told a new conference.