Up to 200 people protested without incident in front of France's embassy in Tehran on Thursday over a French satirical weekly's publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, an Agence France Presse correspondent reported.

The protesters chanted "Death to France," as well as Iran's arch-foes Israel and the United States, as dozens of police deployed around the embassy compound in central Tehran prevented the crowd from approaching.

Israel will not attend a conference on the creation of a nuclear-free Middle East scheduled to take place in Finland, a foreign ministry spokesman said on Thursday.

"This announcement was made on Wednesday in Vienna during a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) by the director of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, Shaul Horev," spokesman Yigal Palmor told Agence France Presse.

Rebel fighters shot down a helicopter in a battleground town near Damascus on Thursday, a watchdog said, as Syria's opposition declared parts of the capital a "disaster area."

A series of explosions rocked the town of Douma, just northeast of Damascus, shortly before the rebels downed the helicopter, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Steps by Gaza's Hamas rulers to crack down on Salafist radicals have created tensions within the enclave that some fear may turn into an armed confrontation.

Although there are only a few hundred Salafists in Gaza, they have made a name for themselves as unafraid to openly challenge Hamas, seeking to outbid them in the fight against Israel and the defence of Islam.

An Israeli air strike on the Gaza Strip killed two Hamas fighters near the Egyptian border late Wednesday, the Islamist movement that controls the Palestinian territory said.

The strike, witnessed by an Agence France Presse photographer, hit a car in the town of Rafah on the territory's southern border with Egypt.

U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon said Wednesday that President Bashar Assad and the Syrian opposition were determined to fight to the end, but renewed appeals for political dialogue.

Ban told a press conference it was "troubling" that 18 months into the uprising against Assad there was no solution in sight.

Syrian rebels seized control of a border crossing on the Turkish frontier on Wednesday after clashes with troops loyal to President Bashar Assad, a Turkish official told Agence France Presse.

Turkish media footage showed Syrian rebels pulling down the Syrian flag at the Tall al-Abyad border post on the main highway between the city of Raqa in northeastern Syria and the Turkish city of Sanliurfa.

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi on Wednesday issued a decree naming Mohammed Raafat Shehata the country's new head of intelligence, after the former spy chief was forced into retirement.

Shehata had been acting director of the Egyptian General Intelligence Directorate since August 8 when his predecessor Murad Muwafi resigned, the official MENA news agency reported.

The United States on Wednesday accused a Belarus state-owned firm of supplying munitions to the Syrian government, as it announced new sanctions focused on the Syrian conflict.

The U.S. Treasury named Belarus firm Belvneshpromservice and the Syrian military's Army Supply Service for sanctions under U.S. executive order 13382 that identifies targets as proliferators or supporters of proliferators of weapons of mass destruction.

French schools and cultural centers in Egypt will close on Thursday as a precautionary measure after the publication in France of cartoons mocking the Prophet Mohammed, the consulate said.

"Although there has been no specific threat in Egypt, it has been decided as a precaution and as in other countries, to close French schools and cultural centers in Egypt on Thursday September 20," it said in a statement.