An Algerian court on Tuesday sentenced to jail four unemployed people on charges of "illegal gathering" after they held a protest last month to demand jobs, while 13 others were acquitted, their lawyer said.

The four, who were also accused of using force against police, were sentenced each to one month in prison, lawyer Naima Saci told Agence France Presse after the verdict was announced at a court in Laghouat, southern Algeria.

A Bahraini criminal court on Tuesday sentenced two policemen to 10 years in jail each after they were convicted of torturing to death a Shiite protester, while acquitting three others, a judicial source said.

The two policemen were convicted of "torturing to death Ali al-Saqr... following his arrest during the uprising in February 2011," the source said.

A whole generation of Syrian children risks being lost amid the spiraling civil war in the country, the U.N. children's agency cautioned Tuesday, saying it was in urgent need of funds to address the crisis.

"Millions of children inside Syria and across the region are witnessing their past and their futures disappear amidst the rubble and destruction of this prolonged conflict," UNICEF chief Anthony Lake said in a report published two years to the day after the Syrian conflict began.

A man set himself on fire Tuesday in central Tunis, an Agence France Presse reporter witnessed, hours before the country's lawmakers were to vote on a new government tasked with pulling Tunisia out of a deep political crisis.

"This is a young man who sells cigarettes because of unemployment," shouted the man before immolating himself on Habib Bourguiba avenue in front of the municipal building, according to a witness.

President Barack Obama on Monday, just days ahead of his Mideast trip, met with about 10 leaders of Arab-American groups who encouraged him to deliver a message of hope to the Palestinian people even if he is unable to immediately deliver a peace plan with Israel.

Obama met with the officials Monday, four days after meeting with Jewish leaders as part of his preparation for the visit.

Syrian rebels and troops fought fierce battles over a keenly contested neighborhood of Homs on Tuesday, as fresh clashes broke out on the road linking Damascus to its international airport, a watchdog said.

The fighting in Homs was focused on the Khaldiyeh district and comes one week into a massive army and pro-regime militia assault to reclaim rebel districts in the central Syria city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Two Israeli reservists were killed in the crash of their helicopter in the south of the country overnight, an army spokesman said Tuesday.

The accident happened during flight training when the Bell AH-1 attack helicopter went down for still unknown reasons.

Kuwait on Monday urged Iraq to allow work to continue to repair markers on their common border after a number of Iraqis rioted near the site and disrupted the U.N.-supervised repairs.

A foreign ministry official cited by the state-run KUNA news agency said a number of Iraqi citizens on Monday erected a big tent on the border near marker 105 and removed a metal pipe between markers 105 and 106.

MPs engaged in heated debates Monday over plans to hold a vote in July on a much-delayed constitution and schedule new elections in October as part of efforts to resolve a political crisis plaguing Tunisia.

"We denounce this hastiness concerning the calendar" of the elections, Democratic Alliance party MP Mohamed Hamdi said after the office of the president of the National Constituent Assembly (NCA) announced the proposed dates.

The United States Monday condemned what it called a "terrorist" assault on Syrian regime forces who came under fire after crossing into Iraq last week in an attack claimed by an al-Qaida group.

"Any kind of attack like this, any kind of terrorism like this is something that we should condemn," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.