Kuwaiti opposition MPs said on Thursday they have decided to quiz the interior minister after two youth activists were questioned and harassed for remarks on their Twitter accounts.

"The (Islamic) Reform and Development Bloc has decided to grill the interior minister over the harassment of tweeters," spokesman MP Faisal al-Muslim told reporters.

Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi met Syrian opposition figures Thursday, a day after Damascus agreed to open talks with dissidents, a member of the Syrian National Council said.

Arabi "briefed us on the details of the Arab League initiative and its goals ... aimed at finding an Arab solution to the Syrian crisis based on the need to stop the bloodshed in Syria," said Samir al-Nashar, a member of the executive bureau of the SNC.

Two Palestinians were killed and one was wounded on Thursday in an Israeli air strike in the northern Gaza Strip, a spokesman for the Hamas emergency services said.

The Israeli military confirmed the strike in a statement that said the air force had targeted a "terrorist squad" which had opened fire on troops in an area near Gaza's northern border with Israel.

The Palestinian leadership faces decisions about the peace process that will "change the face of the region," presidential spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina said on Thursday.

"The coming weeks and months will be crucial and form an important crossroads, particularly in terms of the peace process in the region," the spokesman for president Mahmud Abbas told Agence France Presse.

A suicide bomber and a car bomb targeted anti-Qaida militiamen near Baquba, north of Baghdad, on Thursday, killing five people and wounding 26, an army officer and a doctor said.

The suicide bomber detonated his explosives about 9:15 am (06:15 GMT), as Sahwa (Awakening) militiamen gathered near an Iraqi army base to pick up their salaries, a colonel in the Baquba operations command said.

Rescue services evacuated 1,230 passengers onto life rafts from a burning ferry in the Red Sea on Thursday, with one Egyptian dying after jumping into the sea, Jordan's civil defense spokesman told Agence France Presse.

By afternoon, only the captain and three crew members remained aboard the stricken ship.

Saudi authorities have released six Shiites detained after protests in the Eastern Province last spring, bringing to 23 those released in two days, activists said on Thursday.

All those freed come from the Shiite area of al-Qatif.

Israel began a major civil defense drill in the Tel Aviv region on Thursday aimed at simulating the response to conventional and non-conventional missile attacks, the military said.

"The rescue units of the civil defense, police, fire service and Magen David Adom (emergency services) will participate in the exercise," an army statement said.

Syrian troops killed 20 civilians and arrested dozens on Thursday, a rights watchdog said, a day after Damascus pledged to withdraw its forces from protest hubs under an Arab League plan to end the bloodshed.

"Twenty civilians were killed today in several neighborhoods of Homs where the sound of gunfire can still be heard," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights in a statement received by Agence France Presse.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking cabinet support for a military strike on Iran, the Haaretz newspaper reported on Wednesday, after days of speculation about plans for an attack.

The report, citing a senior Israeli official, said Netanyahu was working with Defense Minister Ehud Barak to win support from skeptical members of the cabinet who oppose attacking Iranian nuclear facilities.