Dozens of Muslims gathered Thursday outside a Baghdad church where an Islamist assault killed 44 worshipers and two priests three years ago, appealing for Christians to stay in Iraq.

Clergy led low-key prayers inside Our Lady of Salvation church in the capital's main commercial district of Karrada, on the anniversary of the October 31, 2010 attack.

Algeria said Thursday it considers as "unjustified" a decision by Morocco to recall its ambassador in response to comments by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika about disputed Western Sahara.

The spat follows the latest barbed exchange between the North African neighbors whose decades-old rivalry centers on the disputed territory, annexed by Morocco in 1975 in a move never recognized by the international community.

A series of explosions struck an air base Thursday in the western Syrian province of Latakia, a regime stronghold, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

"Several explosions were heard in an air defense base in the Snubar Jableh area" on Wednesday, said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is heading back to the Middle East as efforts to hold Syria peace talks bog down, Israeli-Palestinian negotiations stumble and rare tensions with key ally Saudi Arabia flare into the open.

With the Obama administration taking fire at home and abroad for what is perceived to be its indecisive Syria policy and Arab unease about its outreach to Iran, Kerry is hitting the road again seeking to ease tensions and soothe allies vital to its Middle East ambitions.

Two Norwegian girls of Somali origin are believed to be held captive in Syria after traveling to the country to support rebels there, their father said in a report Thursday by Norway's public broadcaster NRK.

"They are held against their will," the man, who was not identified by NRK, said in an interview recorded late Wednesday in Antakya, a Turkish city near the Syrian border.

Sudanese Islamist scholars have formed a National Movement for Change that hopes to lead a search for alternatives to the country's "failed" political system, a member said Thursday.

"We are calling on other people from different political or cultural (groups) or think tanks to join us to try to find a new way for Sudan," Khalid Tigani, one of about 10 members of the group, told Agence France Presse.

A Kuwaiti lawmaker on Thursday asked to question the oil-rich Gulf state's prime minister, blaming him for a chronic housing crisis, rife corruption and a decline in public services.

The grilling is expected to be debated late November and could lead to a vote of no-confidence that, if approved, would result in the dismissal of Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Mubarak al-Sabah, who was appointed to the post just two years ago.

The Syrian press on Thursday praised the visit of international peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who arrived in Damascus Monday after a falling out with President Bashar Assad that lasted nearly a year.

Brahimi's "visit to Syria began on a good note. This is because of favorable changes on the international and regional planes, and at home in terms of popular sentiment and military developments," said the ruling party's mouthpiece Baath newspaper.

Qatar's new emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, concluded on Thursday a three-day tour of Gulf nations in which he stressed his support for a regional union.

"This was basically a friendly tour, although it also carried a clear political message expressing the emir's support to the Gulf union initiative presented by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia," a Qatari official told Agence France Presse.

Five car bombs north of Baghdad killed 19 people Thursday, while attacks elsewhere in Iraq left seven more dead, officials said, the latest casualties in a nationwide spike in unrest.

The attacks, which wounded dozens, come as Iraq witnesses its worst violence since 2008, a surge in bloodshed that has killed more than 5,400 people this year despite authorities having carried out a swathe of operations and implemented tightened security measures.