Palestinians in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip said they received phone calls on Friday from the Israeli army accusing the Islamist movement of failing to provide for civilians.

"To the residents of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army warns you against obeying the orders of the terrorist Hamas or having any contact with it," the recipient of one such pre-recorded message quoted it to Agence France Presse as saying.

The U.N. special envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, will on Saturday visit Egypt as he kicks off a regional tour to prepare for peace talks on Syria dubbed Geneva 2, his spokesman said.

Brahimi will meet Egypt's foreign minister Nabil Fahmy as well as the Arab League Secretary General Nabil al-Arabi, spokesman Khawla Mattar said in Geneva on Friday.

An uptick in violence in the West Bank is cause for concern but not part of an orchestrated Palestinian campaign, Israeli media said on Friday.

A series of incidents, the latest of which saw Israeli soldiers shoot dead a Palestinian who forced his way into an army base on Thursday, have killed and injured several Israelis.

Russia on Friday sharply criticized Saudi Arabia for rejecting membership of the U.N. Security Council, slamming the kingdom's "strange" argument that the body had failed over the Syria conflict, as France said it shared Riyadh's “frustration.”

"We are surprised by Saudi Arabia's unprecedented decision," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

Libya's military police chief, Colonel Mustapha al-Barghathi, was shot dead Friday in the restive eastern city of Benghazi in the latest assault on the restive country's fledgling security forces.

Unknown assailants gunned down Barghathi outside his home, Colonel Abdullah al-Zaidi, spokesman for the security services, told Agence France Presse.

Angry members of the security forces on Friday drove Tunisia's President Moncef Marzouki and Prime Minister Ali Larayedh away from a memorial ceremony for two slain policeman, an Agence France Presse photographer said.

The security force members, some of them in uniform, shouted "Get out" at the Tunisian leaders, obliging them to leave the official ceremony at the military barracks in the Tunis suburb of L'Aouina.

Syrian regime shelling killed 12 people Friday in a Kurdish town in Aleppo province, where 20 soldiers and seven rebels were killed in clashes at a military base, an NGO said.

"Twelve Kurdish citizens, including six children... were killed in government shelling of an area in the town of Tal-Aran," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, adding that at least 11 other people were wounded.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Israel Friday to show "restraint" in the building of Jewish settlements, after talks with the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.

"We call on Israel to show restraint in the matter of settlement building," Merkel told a joint press conference with Abbas in Berlin.

Cyprus said on Friday that it has approved the establishment of a support base on the Mediterranean island for chemical weapons inspectors deployed in war-hit Syria.

"The Council of Ministers has ratified the agreement between the Republic of Cyprus and the U.N.-OPCW (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) for the establishment of a support base of the joint mission of U.N.-OPCW," said a government statement.

Tunisian security forces have killed "several terrorists" in an operation against an armed group suspected of an attack this week in which two policeman died, the interior ministry said Friday.

"Special forces from the interior ministry, the National Guard and the army took part in this operation. It began with air strikes and we are now in the terrestrial phase," ministry spokesman Mohamed Ali Aroui told Agence France Presse.