Syrian regime warplanes and troops on Friday blasted away at rebels close to Damascus, the day after a car bomb in a mainly Alawite northern district of the capital killed at least 11 people, a watchdog said.

Fighter-bombers were hitting Duma, northeast of Damascus, and army artillery was shelling the southwestern Daraya neighborhood which the rebels have led against regime assaults for weeks, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The death toll from a truck bomb targeting pilgrims after the conclusion of annual mourning rituals for a revered figure in Shiite Islam has risen to 23, an official said on Friday.

A further 49 people were wounded in the Thursday evening attack in the town of Musayyib, which lies about half-way along the main route linking Baghdad and the shrine city of Karbala where millions of worshippers have attended Arbaeen commemoration ceremonies in recent days.

Hundreds of thousands of supporters of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party on Friday held their first mass rally in Gaza since Hamas seized control of the territory in 2007, according to a Fatah spokesman.

Hamas, in a sign of reconciliation with Fatah, permitted the rally to go ahead as the climax of a week of Gaza festivities celebrating the 48th anniversary of Fatah taking up arms against Israel.

A car bomb in a north Damascus neighborhood mainly inhabited by members of President Bashar Assad's Alawite minority killed at least 11 people, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Friday.

Two children were among the dead in the attack which occurred late Thursday in the Massaken Barzeh district, the Britain-based watchdog said.

Australians who take part in the fighting in Syria face up to 20 years in jail, a spokesman for Foreign Minister Bob Carr said Friday after a Melbourne man was reportedly killed in the conflict.

The spokesman said the government was aware of reports that more than 100 Australians had engaged in the conflict since 2011 but he had "no evidence" of any citizens currently involved.

A senior Sunni politician on Thursday blamed Iraq's anti-terror forces, which report directly to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's office, for the shooting of his young nephew the previous day.

The remarks from Atheel al-Nujaifi, governor of the northern province of Nineveh, threaten to further raise political and sectarian tensions with Maliki's Shiite-led government, which has already been grappling with days of protests by the country's Sunni minority.

A new U.S. drone strike on Thursday killed three al-Qaida suspects in the town of Rada in Yemen's central al-Bayda province, the site of similar recent attacks, tribal sources there said.

Mukbel Abbad, brother-in-law of Tareq al-Dahab who led the al-Qaida fighters in a brief January 2012 raid on Rada, was killed along with two other suspects, the sources said.

Slovenia on Thursday recognized Syria's opposition National Coalition forces as the only legitimate representative of the Syrian people.

"Syrian president Bashar Assad has lost all legitimacy to continue governing Syria and the National Coalition has proved to be a relevant and credible partner in discussions with the international community," the government said in a statement.

emen's former president Ali Abdullah Saleh is to travel to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment, diplomatic sources said Thursday, as his opponents called for him to be kept out of politics ahead of a stalled national dialogue.

"One week ago, Saleh applied for a visa to receive medical treatment in Saudi Arabia. There is Saudi approval for the request," a diplomat said.

A truck bomb killed 19 worshippers south of Baghdad on Thursday as pilgrims from around the world thronged Iraq's shrine city of Karbala to finish commemorations for a revered figure in Shiite Islam.

The attack came despite a massive security operation mounted to safeguard the millions of Shiite Muslims traveling to and from Karbala for the conclusion of Arbaeen mourning rituals.