British Foreign Secretary William Hague on Thursday urged Syrian opposition groups to unite to halt extremists gaining influence in the country, as new leaders for the movement were elected in Doha.

Hague, speaking during a visit to India, said that opposition factions had to work together to end the conflict in Syria which erupted last year when protesters took to the streets to demand the fall of President Bashar Assad.

Turkey's President Abdullah Gul said Thursday that the country reserved the right to defend itself against any threat from neighboring Syria, amid discussions about the possible deployment of U.S. Patriot missiles.

"Patriots... are being discussed within NATO. It is only natural for us to take any measure for defense reasons," Gul told reporters, but insisted that it was "out of the question for Turkey to start a war with Syria.”

A car bomb in the center of a predominantly Shiite city south of the Iraqi capital killed four people and wounded 11 others on Thursday, officials said.

The blast occurred at around 10:00 am (0700 GMT) in Hilla, capital of Babil province and around 95 kilometers (60 miles) from Baghdad, a medic and a police officer said. Both spoke on condition of anonymity.

The humanitarian situation in Syria is now so bad that the Red Cross is struggling to cope, the new head of the international aid agency said Thursday.

"The humanitarian situation is getting worse despite the scope of the operation increasing," Peter Maurer, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, told reporters in Geneva.

The main opposition Syrian National Council, under pressure to unite and bring in all parties, has elected a new leadership with Islamists heavily represented, SNC officials said on Thursday.

They said a president of the opposition coalition would be chosen on Friday, after the 40-member general secretariat was elected overnight at a meeting in the Qatari capital.

An Armenian plane carrying humanitarian aid for Syria was forced to land in Turkey on Thursday for an inspection of its cargo, the Anatolia news agency reported.

The cargo plane landed at Erzurum airport in eastern Turkey where teams of police and troops with sniffer dogs began their searches, it said.

A drone strike near the Yemeni capital killed three suspected al-Qaida members including a militant wanted for a deadly attack on the U.S. embassy in Sanaa, security officials said on Thursday.

They said the drone strike, believed to have been carried out by the United States, targeted a car near the village of Beit al-Ahmar in the Sanhan region, 15 kilometers (nine miles) southeast of Sanaa.

A car bomb exploded in Libya's second city of Benghazi on Wednesday, wounding an officer who had served in the regime of slain leader Moammar Gadhafi, a local security official told Agence France Presse.

Hussam al-Raaid, a former officer of the toppled regime's reviled internal security services, was wounded when his booby-trapped vehicle exploded outside his house, the official said on condition of anonymity.

A Libyan military court on Wednesday ordered prosecutors to interrogate former transitional leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil over the murder of a general who had commanded rebel forces last year.

The court in the eastern city of Benghazi ordered that the ex-chairman of the National Transitional Council, a political body representing rebels in the 2011 conflict, be questioned over the killing of General Abdel Fatah Younes.

Turkey said Wednesday it is in talks with NATO over the possible deployment of Patriot missiles on its soil amid the escalating conflict in neighboring Syria, but the prime minister insisted that no request has yet been made.

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters during a visit to Brussels that it was only "normal" to discuss any defense measures in the face of potential risk from Syria, according to the state-run Anatolia news agency.