The U.N. human rights chief expressed concern Friday after the Red Cross said it was struggling to deliver aid in war-ravaged Syria.

"The fact that they've now said they are unable to perform their core functions there is very significant," United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay told Agence France Presse.

A Palestinian teenager died Thursday after being hit by bullets fired from an Israeli helicopter in the Gaza Strip, and a booby-trapped tunnel in the same area lightly wounded an Israeli soldier, officials said.

Ashraf al-Qudra, spokesman for Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry, named the victim killed near Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip as 13-year-old Hmeid Abu Daqqa, and said he had been killed near the border.

Syrians from a broad spectrum of opposition to President Bashar Assad seemed close Thursday to reaching agreement on a unified political structure that world powers will accept as credible and representative.

"We are moving towards agreement," said Burhan Ghalioun, former chief of the main opposition Syrian National Council hours after the meeting started.

Woken up by artillery pounding the outskirts of Damascus, three-year-old Ammar runs crying to his mother who reassures him it was only a ball that hit a wall of their home.

Long spared the violence that has engulfed the rest of the country, the Syrian capital is now submerged in the war between government forces and rebels out to topple the regime of President Bashar Assad.

Damascus on Thursday lashed out at Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi, saying he has “submitted his credentials to states and terrorist organizations that are seeking to destroy Syria.”

“Arabi is hallucinating about changing the political system of a founding state of the Arab League and he's only an employee who works for its states,” Syria's foreign ministry spokesman Jihad Maqdisi said.

Two guards of vice president Tareq al-Hashemi were Thursday sentenced by an Iraqi court to death for planting a roadside bomb, at a hearing boycotted by defense lawyers who said it was unfair.

Hashemi, a top Sunni official and a prominent critic of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, has himself being handed four death sentences in absentia. He dismisses the charges against he and his staff as politically-motivated.

Syrian rebels and forces loyal to Damascus were fighting Thursday for control of a military border crossing in the north of the country on the Turkish frontier, Turkish media reported.

The clashes near the town of Ras al-Ain erupted late Wednesday and were still going on Thursday, the reports said.

Syrian President Bashar Assad on Thursday rejected calls that he seek a safe exit, vowing he would "live and die in Syria,” in an interview with Russian Arabic-language channel Rusiya Al-Yaum.

"I am not a puppet.... I am Syrian and I must live and die in Syria," Assad, who is facing a nearly 20-month revolt against his rule, told the channel according to transcripts published on its website.

Three mortar shells fired from Syria landed in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Thursday, causing no damage or injuries, the army said, in the latest apparent spillover from violence ravaging Syria.

"They are apparently shells fired in error during fighting between different forces inside Syria," an Israeli army spokeswoman told Agence France Presse.

An explosion on an oil pipeline in southeastern Yemen on Thursday suspended a South Korean-run operation, which pumps 8,000 barrels of crude per day, energy and security officials said.

"Unknown assailants placed an explosive device under the pipeline" running from the Iyadh region in Shabwa province to Belhaf terminal on the Gulf of Aden, a security source said.