Two abandoned patients fled a bombed-out mental hospital in Syria's northern city of Aleppo this week and were killed by snipers, a watchdog said, highlighting the horror of a conflict which the U.N. says has killed 60,000 people.

The men were gunned down by sniper fire on Wednesday in the embattled city where fighting has been at a grinding stalemate for months, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights watchdog said.

A spate of bombings and shootings in Baghdad and a restive province north of the capital killed nine people on Thursday morning, security and medical officials said.

In Baghdad, a car bomb at 8:00 am (0500 GMT) killed at least three people and wounded 11 others near a police station in the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Hurriyah, officials said.

Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas and exiled Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal have agreed to expedite a stalled reconciliation deal between the rival factions, a Hamas official said Thursday.

The decision came at a meeting in Cairo that was the first in almost a year between the West Bank's Fatah leader Abbas and Meshaal, who heads the Hamas movement that rules the Gaza Strip, and was aimed at ending years of bitter and sometimes deadly rivalry.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and his Israeli counterpart Ehud Barak met Wednesday for a meeting that underscored a "strong US commitment to Israel's security," the Pentagon said.

U.S. Defense Department spokesman George Little said in a statement that the two men "discussed a range of issues, and expressed their commitment to ensuring continued cooperation on many important regional issues -- particularly Syria, Iran, and Gaza."

A Tunisian NGO that defends minorities and campaigns notably against homophobia and anti-semitism on Wednesday accused a controversial militia close to the ruling Islamists of attacking its office.

"Our offices were broken into and vandalized. We have just filed a complaint. We know very well who did that. It was the League for the Protection of the Revolution, which has threatened us several times," said Yamina Thabet, head of the Tunisian Association for the Defense of Minorities.

French President Francois Hollande will head to the United Arab Emirates next week where he will push the Gulf state to buy Rafale fighter jets, a French diplomatic source said Wednesday.

France is keen to make its first foreign sale of the Rafale, which has struggled to find buyers to support a project that has cost tens of billions of euros.

Peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said Wednesday ahead of U.S.-Russia talks on Syria that President Bashar Assad's new plan for his embattled country is "more sectarian, more one-sided" than previous initiatives.

He spoke as the first major prisoner swap in the 21-month conflict took place, with rebels freeing 48 Iranians in exchange for more than 2,000 regime detainees in a drawn-out deal with Damascus reportedly brokered by Turkey, Qatar and Iran.

Syrian ministers have taken on specific tasks for implementing President Bashar Assad's plan to end the country's raging civil war, state news agency SANA said on Wednesday.

The plan, announced by Assad on Sunday, is being rolled out by the government despite it being rejected by opposition groups within and without the violence-wracked country.

An Egyptian journalist accused of trespassing and filming in a military zone on the border with the Gaza Strip has been released, but only until his trial continues next week, his lawyer said on Wednesday.

The army arrested Mohammed Sabry, a freelance video journalist and activist who opposed military trials, in the border town of Rafah in the eastern Sinai Peninsula while he was working for Reuters news agency, Amnesty International said.

Four people were killed in clashes pitting Toubou tribesmen against a brigade linked to the Libyan army in the southern town of Kufra, a military official told AFP on Wednesday.

"Four Toubou tribesmen were killed on Tuesday in clashes against Shield Libya," an army force made up of former rebels, the official said.