Angry Palestinians mobbed French Foreign Minister Michele Alliot-Marie on Friday as she visited Gaza due to a "war crimes" remark wrongly attributed to her by Israeli radio.

The foreign minister, on her first visit to the enclave since taking over the post in November, was met by angry protesters as her convoy arrived, then again as she visited a hospital in Gaza City.

Senior White House adviser Dennis Ross and another top U.S. official arrived in Israel on Thursday for talks about Israel's "security needs," an official statement said.

Ross and David Hale, adviser to U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell, would "hold talks about questions regarding Israel's security needs as well as other issues related to regional security," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said.

At least 50 people died in a spate of explosions across Iraq on Thursday, including 45 in twin suicide car bombs that rocked the holy city of Karbala, the third major attack in as many days.

The attacks mostly targeted pilgrims marking the Shiite Muslim mourning day of Arbaeen, and were the latest in a series of bombings that have shattered a relative calm in Iraq following the formation of a new government last month.

A total of 13 civilians including children and women were killed Wednesday by a Taliban-style roadside bomb in eastern Afghanistan, officials in Kabul said.

The blast hit a three-wheeled vehicle and killed "13 of our innocent civilian compatriots, including women, children and elderly men," the interior ministry said in a statement.

A court in Sanaa on Monday sentenced to death a Yemeni accused of killing a Frenchman and handed down a 10-year jail sentence in absentia to radical U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaqi.

Hisham Mohammed Assem, who was given the death penalty by a Sanaa criminal court after being convicted of killing French energy contractor Jacques Spagnolo near Sanaa in October, said in court he will appeal the verdict.

A rocket fired by militants in Gaza landed in southern Israel early on Monday, in the first incidence of firing since armed Palestinian groups there agreed to observe a truce last week.

The projectile, a home-built Qassam rocket, caused no injuries or damage when it landed in the Shaar HaNegev regional council which flanks Gaza's northeastern border.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak abruptly announced Monday that he was leaving his Labor Party and forming a new parliamentary faction inside the governing coalition, completing a split in the iconic party over the handling of peace talks with the Palestinians.

The dramatic and unexpected move did not immediately threaten the stability of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's parliamentary majority. Instead, it appeared to strengthen Netanyahu's hardline coalition by leaving it with a smaller, yet largely like-minded majority.

Hundreds of protesters marched in the Tunisian capital Friday shouting slogans against President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the day after he promised not to seek another term, an Agence France Presse reporter said.

"No to Ben Ali, the uprising continues," they cried.

Saudi aviation minister has kicked off the construction work on the new terminal at Jeddah airport which will cost 27.1 billion riyals ($7.2 billion).

Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, who is also the minister of defense, late Tuesday laid the cornerstone for the project during a ceremony at King Abdul Aziz airport, whose annual capacity should rise to 30 million passengers when the project is completed in 36 months.

At least 35 people have been killed in the riots that erupted over the weekend in Tunisia, the president of the International Federation for Human Rights said Tuesday.

"We have a list of the names of the 35," Souhayr Belhassen told Agence France Presse. "The total figure is higher. It's somewhere around 50, but that's an estimate."