Turkey's foreign minister on Thursday hit back at French lawmakers who passed a bill last week criminalizing denial of the disputed Armenian genocide.

French lawmakers voted last Thursday to jail and fine anyone in France who denies that the 1915 killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire amounted to genocide, prompting Turkey to suspend political and military cooperation with Paris.

A Turkish air raid on a Kurdish area near the Iraq border killed at least 35 people, with the military apparently mistaking smugglers for separatist rebels, officials said Thursday.

The Turkish authorities said its warplanes targeted militants from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) on the Iraqi side of the border.

Unbeknownst to many, Turkish diplomats on duty around Europe saved hundreds of Jews during World War II by giving them Turkish passports, enabling them to travel to safety in Turkey.

This little known episode is told in an independent documentary entitled "Turkish Passport", being promoted as finally revealing "a secret kept for 66 years".

Turkey and Azerbaijan signed on Monday an agreement to build a pipeline to carry 10 billion cubic meters of Azeri gas to European markets starting in 2017, the Anatolia news agency reported.

The deal comes as the EU's plans to build the so-called Nabucco pipeline across Turkey to bring in Caspian Sea gas and reduce Europe's dependence on Russia has struggled to sign up suppliers.

Former premier Saad Hariri on Monday said the Arab League should seek a “no-fly zone” over revolt-hit Syria, stressing that “everything must be done” to stop what he called a “massacre.”

“The Arab League should go to the U.N. and (seek) a no-fly zone (over Syria) and if Russia vetoes (the resolution) then a joint force should be formed with Turkey,” Hariri said on the social networking website Twitter.

An Israeli parliamentary committee is to hold a debate on Monday on recognizing genocide in Armenia, a move likely to further strain already tense relations with Turkey.

The education committee is to convene at 10 am (08:00 GMT) to discuss a proposal to mark April 24, the day when Turkish mass killings of Armenians started in 1915, as a memorial day for "the massacre of the Armenian people."

Turkey's deputy prime minister Sunday accused French President Nicolas Sarkozy of breaking a promise that the parliament would not pass a bill criminalizing the denial of genocide in Armenia.

French lawmakers voted Thursday to jail and fine anyone in France who denies that the 1915 killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire amounted to genocide, prompting Turkey to suspend political and military cooperation with Paris.

Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya will begin a tour on Sunday, his office said, his first exit from Gaza since Israel and Egypt imposed a siege in 2007.

Sources in his office told AFP that Haniya would visit Egypt and Sudan, after which he plans to go to Qatar, Turkey, Tunisia, and Bahrain.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday accused France of committing "genocide" in Algeria after French lawmakers voted a bill criminalizing the denial of Armenian genocide.

"France massacred an estimated 15 percent of the Algerian population starting from 1945. This is genocide," Erdogan told a news conference after the French move on the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman-era forces.

Turkey's ambassador to Paris returned to Ankara for consultations Friday following a vote by the French parliament to ban the denial of the Armenian genocide, an embassy spokesman said.

Tahsin Burcuoglu left from Charles de Gaulle airport outside Paris with his wife on a 7:40am (06:40 GMT) flight and is expected in the Turkish capital in the afternoon, spokesman Engin Solakoglu told Agence France Presse.