Turkey on Friday called for Syria's regime to immediately stop deadly aerial bombing of rebel targets and for the two sides to observe a truce ahead of the Eid al-Adha Muslim holiday next week.

"It is particularly important that the Syrian regime immediately stop and without conditions, the recent attacks against the population with planes and helicopters," Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters in Ankara.

A spokesman for Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi confirmed on Thursday the authenticity of a controversial letter describing his Israeli counterpart as a "great" friend, saying it followed protocol.

The letter, sent for the confirmation of Egypt's new ambassador to Tel Aviv, was leaked to the Israeli press and sparked criticism at home for the Islamist Morsi, who has so far refused to mention Israel by name in his speeches.

Syria's air force carried out raids on Friday morning against rebels besieging a major military base in the northwestern province of Idlib, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

"Military aircraft dropped bombs that targeted rebels camped near (the base at) Wadi Deif," concentrating their firepower on the villages of Talmans and Maashemsha, said the Britain-based monitoring group.

Al-Qaida militants set off an explosives-laden car inside an army base in southern Yemen at dawn on Friday, killing at least 14 soldiers, military officials said.

The militants drove through several checkpoints before entering the base of the Yemeni army's 115th brigade in Abyan province, where a drone raid killed at least seven Al-Qaida members the day before, one official told AFP.

Former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan said Thursday that Iran has told him it would accept the fall of Syrian ally Bashar Assad if the conflict-torn country holds elections.

Annan, who served until August as the U.N.-Arab League special envoy on Syria, renewed his call for a peaceful solution to the crisis and warned that foreign weapons were only fueling a conflict said to have claimed more than 34,000 lives.

International peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said on Thursday that a temporary ceasefire he has called for in Syria could form the basis for a real truce in the war-torn country.

"If the ceasefire is implemented, we can build on it and make it a real truce as well as the start of a political process that would help the Syrians solve their problems and rebuild their country," Brahimi said in Amman.

An opposition party coordinator in the southern town of Tataouine died Thursday as his supporters clashed with those of the Islamist-led government, his Call of Tunisia party and the interior ministry said.

A party official told Agence France Presse that Lotfi Naguedh died after being beaten by pro-government demonstrators who attacked his office.

President Bashar Assad of Syria, where more than 33,000 people have been killed in 19 months of conflict, issued a law on GM food Thursday to preserve human life, state-run SANA news agency reported.

Assad, whose forces are locked in a bloody confrontation with armed rebels opposed to his rule, "has approved a law on the health security of genetically modified organisms... to regulate their use and production," SANA reported.

At least 28,000 people have disappeared in Syria since the start of an anti-regime uprising 19 months ago, arrested by troops or pro-government militiamen, a global activist group said on Thursday.

Avaaz said the forced disappearances was part of a "deliberate" campaign by the authorities to silence dissent against the government of President Bashar Assad.

Syrian fighter jets blasted the rebel-held town of Maaret al-Numan on Thursday, killing at least 44 people, rescuers said, as 144 people were killed across the country according to activists.

Rescue workers said the air force's bombs destroyed two residential buildings and a mosque, where many women and children were taking refuge, in the strategic northwestern town, which was captured by rebel fighters on October 9 in their push to create a buffer zone along the Turkish border.