Syrian rebels launched a devastating car bomb attack Monday that killed 50 pro-regime fighters, a watchdog said, as air strikes pounded rebel positions and the opposition met for talks on an overhaul.

The suicide car bomb attack on a military post in the central province of Hama struck early Monday, killing at least 50 government troops and loyalist militiamen, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Eight people have been arrested over the death of an opposition party official last month during a protest by supporters of Tunisia's ruling Islamists that turned violent, his family said on Monday.

"They arrested eight people yesterday (Sunday)," said Fethi Naguedh, the brother-in-law of Lotfi Naguedh, who represented the Call of Tunisia party in the southern town of Tataouine, where the violence took place.

A Swiss laboratory team on Monday made a brief visit to the West Bank city of Ramallah to prepare for the exhumation of the late president Yasser Arafat, Palestinian sources said.

The team, along with French investigators, is expected to participate in an operation starting on November 26 to exhume Arafat's remains as part of a probe into the circumstances of his death in 2004.

More than 30 people were killed in a 24-hour period in a Palestinian refugee camp south of the Syrian capital Damascus amid fierce clashes between the army and rebels, Palestinian sources said on Monday.

Seven people were killed Monday when a mortar landed on a mini-bus traveling along the western edge of the Yarmouk Palestinian camp, according to Palestinian sources and Syrian state television.

Israeli prosecutors have charged two Jewish youths with vandalising Palestinian cars and incitement to racism, a police statement said on Monday.

It said that they were arrested on October 21 and last week charged with puncturing the tires of Palestinian-owned vehicles in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

A series of explosions in the Bahraini capital Manama on Monday killed two Asian expatriates and wounded a third, police said in a statement, describing the blasts as "acts of terror."

"There were five explosions from home-made bombs ... Monday morning" in the Gudaibiya and Adliya districts of Manama, the statement said.

Syria's former prime minister Riad Hijab met Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Monday to discuss efforts to restructure the fragmented Syrian opposition, a diplomatic source told Agence France Presse.

"The ways to address the Syrian crisis and a reorganization among the Syrian opposition ranks were discussed," in the meeting, the source said.

A car bombing near a Shiite mosque in east Baghdad killed three people on Monday, as worshipers continued to mark a key date in the Shiite calendar, officials said.

The blast struck at around noon (0900 GMT) near the al-Obeidi mosque in the east of the capital, killing three people and wounding eight others, according to security and medical officials.

Suspected al-Qaida militants shot dead two Saudi soldiers in a clash Monday as they attempted to infiltrate the kingdom's borders into neighboring Yemen, the interior ministry said.

Ten Saudi militants who were recently released from prison, in addition to a Yemeni, were all arrested after they ambushed a border guard patrol and killed two soldiers, the ministry said.

Israeli forces have detained the wife of an Islamic Jihad leader who is being held in administrative detention, Israeli and Palestinian sources said on Monday.

Palestinian security sources in the northern city of Jenin said Nawal Saadi, 52, was arrested at her home in the city's refugee camp in the early hours of Monday morning.