Regime warplanes launched air raids Thursday on a military airbase in northwest Syria to try to dislodge rebels who have seized more than half of the compound amid fierce clashes on the ground, a watchdog said.

The strikes on Taftanaz military airport came after the hardline Ahrar al-Sham and Al-Nusra Front battalions stormed it on Wednesday following a protracted siege, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The United Nations appealed on Thursday for urgent aid to help thousands of Syrian refugees in a Jordanian camp who are battling mud, water and freezing temperatures in the worst winter storm in a decade.

"The resources we raised in 2012 have been exhausted, and no fresh funds have come for this year. We urgently appeal to the international community and donors in general to commit fresh funding as soon as possible," U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) Jordan representative, Dominique Hyde said in a statement.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi on Thursday urged Middle East nations to promote a solution for Syria's conflict that excludes "foreign intervention," after talks in Cairo with Egyptian leaders.

The renewed statement of Tehran's position on its key ally came as fighting dragged on in Syria, where more than 60,000 people have been killed in the past 21 months according to a U.N. estimate.

A short-range ballistic missile was fired inside Syria on Wednesday following similar launches last week, a NATO official said Thursday.

"We detected the launch of an unguided, short-range ballistic missile inside Syria yesterday. This follows similar launches on 2 and 3 January," the official said.

Israeli settlers opened fire in the northern West Bank on Thursday wounding two Palestinians in separate incidents, Palestinian security forces and witnesses said.

The Israeli military confirmed "clashes" between Palestinians and Israeli settlers in the two locations, but said they had no information on settler gunfire or Palestinian casualties.

Kuwait Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Khaled al-Sabah on Thursday received the first Palestinian ambassador to the Gulf state since the Iraqi invasion in 1990, state news agency KUNA reported.

Top Foreign Ministry officials attended the reception of Ambassador Rami Tahboub, who is expected to submit his credentials to the emir next week.

A car exploded near the Israeli Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv on Thursday, injuring several people, in what police said was a crime-related incident and not linked to militant groups.

"A car bomb exploded in Tel Aviv. Apparently it is a criminal incident, a settling of accounts," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP.

A prisoner swap of 48 Iranians held hostage by Syrian rebels in exchange for more than 2,000 people detained by Damascus "exposes the extent of the Syrian regime's dependence on Tehran," a main opposition group said on Thursday.

"The Syrian regime is so shameless that it is the only regime in the world that exchanges its own citizens' freedom for the freedom of citizens of foreign states," said the Syrian National Council.

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.