Al-Qaida's front group in Iraq said it has launched a campaign of 100 attacks across the country since the middle of August, in a statement seen Saturday by Agence France Presse

The Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) said the campaign began on August 15, Iraq's deadliest day in more than a year, and would exact revenge for the death of Osama bin Laden, who was killed in a U.S. special forces raid in Pakistan in May, and other senior leaders.

The two crew of a Tunisian military helicopter were killed when it crashed Saturday near the Libyan border in the south of the country, a government source said, blaming a technical failure.

The accident happened at Rbayh, 30 kilometers (12 miles) from Ben Guerdane, in an area where the Tunisian army presence has been strengthened in anticipation of an influx of refugees from war-torn Libya.

Turkish planes carried out two raids in Iraq on Friday and bombarded 85 Kurdish rebel targets, the army announced Saturday, without giving any possible casualty figures.

Turkey resumed its bombing of positions held by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the Iraq mountains after a break of more than a year following an attack on Wednesday in southeast Turkey in which nine members of the Turkish security forces were killed.

The Arab League will hold emergency talks on Sunday to discuss the situation in the Gaza Strip after a series of Israeli air strikes on the enclave, the deputy leader of the group said.

"The Arab League will hold an emergency meeting on Sunday, at the request of Palestine, to examine the repercussions of the dangerous situation following Israel's continuous aggression on Gaza," Ahmed Ben Helli told Agence France Presse on Saturday.

Tanks rumbled into the central city of Homs at dawn Saturday, a day after security forces killed at least 33 anti-regime protesters across Syria, adding urgency to a U.N. mission expected this weekend.

"Several tanks took up positions at dawn in the district of Al-Khalidiyeh" in the central city of Homs, Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told Agence France Presse.

Israel and the Palestinians battled each other for a third day on Saturday with rockets fired from Gaza wounding three in southern Israel while Israeli planes attacked the coastal enclave in the early hours.

In a tragic irony, the casualties from Saturday's early-morning rocket fire on the southern Israeli city of Ashdod were all illegal Palestinian workers, sleeping rough.

Egypt has decided to withdraw its ambassador to Israel to protest the deaths of five policemen killed on the border during retaliatory attacks on Palestinian militants, state television said Saturday.

"Egypt has decided to withdraw its ambassador to Israel until there is an official apology," it said. Egypt's military chief of staff, Sami Enan, headed to the Sinai on Friday to probe the deaths of the policemen killed a day earlier.

The EU announced late Friday that 20 new names have been added to a list of Syrian individuals and businesses hit with sanctions, with a deal also now close for a ban on oil imports.

European Union governments meeting in Brussels also decided to prepare detailed plans for an embargo on the import of Syrian crude oil into the bloc and suspending assistance to Syria by the European Investment Bank.

Libyan rebels on Friday claimed to control the strategic town Zawiyah and its key refinery after seizing the hospital, an Agence France Presse journalist said.

"Zawiyah is free," said rebels as they took up positions in the hospital hours after pounding the center of the town, which is the last major barrier before the rebels can think about advancing on Tripoli from the west.

The United States and Iraq have not yet agreed to a post-2011 American military training mission, an aide to the Iraqi premier said Friday, after the U.S. defense chief said Baghdad had given the okay.

"We have not yet agreed on the issue of keeping training forces," Ali Moussawi, media advisor to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, told Agence France Presse.