When Assad al-Islam and Laila dreamed of their wedding day, they did not imagine it quite like this -- at a rebel base in Syria's Turkmen mountains, surrounded by members of Assad's fighter brigade.

"We have nothing in common. The only thing that brought us together is the revolution against the regime," the young couple says.

The "revolutionary" regime of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi should foster tighter ties between its people and those of neighboring Sudan, veteran Islamist Hassan al-Turabi said on Friday.

Speaking after he and other political party figures met the visiting Islamist leader, Turabi said grassroots links must be developed because Morsi's regime "is a popular government elected by the people."

Attacks near Baghdad and central Iraq killed five people on Friday, the latest in an apparent spike in unrest barely two weeks ahead of the country's first elections in three years.

In the deadliest attack, a roadside bomb near a fruit and vegetable stall in a small village south of the capital in Babil province killed three people, security and medical officials said.

Syrian rebels seized a government checkpoint on a key highway from Damascus to the border with Jordan on Friday, a watchdog said, as fighting intensified on the outskirts of the capital.

"Rebel fighters took control of the Umm al-Mayathin military checkpoint... in Daraa province in clashes with regime forces," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Moncef Trabelsi, the brother-in-law of ousted Tunisian strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali who was jailed for fraud, has died in custody of a brain tumour, the country's prisons chief said on Friday.

"He died at the neurological hospital where he was taken (from jail) on March 18. He had been operated on for a brain tumor," the prisons chief, Habib Sboui, told Agence France Presse.

Almost 35,000 Syrian refugees have returned home from Jordan since their country's conflict broke out in March 2011, but a larger number joined the exodus last month alone, a government spokesman said on Friday.

"34,824 Syrian refugees have gone back to their country since the start of the crisis," Anmar al-Hammud, spokesman for the refugee file, told Agence France Presse.

A service truck crashed into a passenger lounge of Jeddah international airport in Saudi Arabia, killing two Iranian pilgrims and injuring four others, reports said on Friday.

The truck, driven by a Nepalese man, careened through the glass panes of the King Abdulaziz International Airport terminal on Thursday, the reports said, citing the Saudi Civil Aviation Authority.

Israel's police deployed reinforcements in Jerusalem on Friday, fearing days of violent protests in the West Bank could spread to the flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound after weekly Muslim prayers.

"There is heightened security in and around the Old City. Extra police officers from different areas have been brought in to prevent any incidents from occurring today," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told Agence France Presse.

Israel's government on Friday strenuously denied it had any link to an arms-laden ship that Egypt said its navy seized as it sailed from the Israeli port of Eilat to Togo in West Africa.

"Nobody in Israel knows anything about this ship. It's clear that it did not come from Eilat or any other Israeli port," foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told Agence France Presse.

Gaza's Hamas rulers on Friday urged the United Nations to reconsider its suspension of food aid for Palestinian refugees, imposed after protesters stormed a U.N. depot.

The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA, stopped food deliveries after dozens of Gazans forced their way into the field office on Thursday, demanding reinstatement of a monthly cash allowance to poor families which was halted from April 1 due to budget cuts.