An air strike killed five al-Qaida militants Thursday in south Yemen while two others died in clashes in the region where the army has been fighting to recapture territory lost last year, a local official said.

The air raid struck an eastern outskirt of Jaar, a town in the Abyan province that is controlled by al-Qaida, killing five Islamist militants and wounding three others, the official said.

Qatar's prime minister urged the international community Thursday to speed up its search for a solution bringing a "peaceful transfer of power" in Syria, as he met French President Francois Hollande.

"We must speed up our search for a solution to maintain the country's stability and equally there must be a plan for a peaceful transfer of power," Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani told reporters after the talks in Paris.

France on Thursday condemned Israeli plans to expand a West Bank settlement by 300 homes and urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to follow through with their construction.

"We call on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to abstain from implementing these plans. We recall that colonization in all its forms is illegal under international law, undermines the two-state solution at ground level and is an obstacle to peace," foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said.

The health of Egypt's ex-president Hosni Mubarak has deteriorated since his transfer to prison after he was sentenced to life in jail over the killing of protesters, the official news agency said Thursday.

Mubarak was suffering from "acute depression" and hypertension since his arrival at Tora prison, south of Cairo, where he has been held in a medical wing since the verdicts in his trial were delivered on Saturday, MENA reported.

Syrian troops and local residents are preventing United Nations observers from reaching a site where 55 people were reported killed by pro-regime militants, the head of the U.N. mission in Syria said Thursday.

"The U.N. Supervision Mission in Syria dispatched U.N. observers to al-Kubeir early Thursday morning to verify reports of large-scale killings in the village," Major General Robert Mood said in a statement.

Russia on Thursday said a new massacre in Syria in which at least 55 civilians were reported killed was a provocation aimed at undermining the faltering peace plan of U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan.

"There is no question that certain forces, not for the first time, are using the most brutal and vile provocations to undermine the plan of Kofi Annan," Russian foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich told a regular briefing in televised remarks, referring to the latest violence in Hama.

The next meeting of the Friends of Syria group will take place on July 6 in Paris, the French foreign ministry said Thursday.

The ministry confirmed the date after French President Francois Hollande last month announced the next meeting of the group would take place in Paris next month.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday condemned the latest onslaught of violence sponsored by the regime in Syria and said President Bashar Assad had to go.

"The regime-sponsored violence that we witnessed in Hama yesterday (Wednesday) is simply unconscionable," she told reporters.

Iraq on Thursday executed Saddam Hussein's presidential secretary and chief bodyguard Abid Hamid Mahmoud, justice ministry spokesman Haidar al-Saadi said.

"He was executed today," Saadi said, adding: "The ministry of justice implemented the execution sentence against the criminal Abd Hmoud... for genocide," referring to Mahmoud by the name Iraqis call him.

The Syrian army is preventing U.N. observers from reaching a farmland region where at least 55 people were reportedly killed by militants loyal to President Bashar Assad, activists said Thursday.