President Vladimir Putin will strongly defend Russia's position on the Syria conflict when he meets British Prime Minister David Cameron in London on Thursday, his spokesman said.

"We expect to have another opportunity to continue our dialogue and explain to the British side our well-argued, consistent and absolutely clear position on the (Syria) problem," spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian news agencies.

Seven Iranian Red Crescent workers who were abducted by an armed group in the Libyan city of Benghazi are being held and questioned by a local militia, a security official told Agence France Presse on Wednesday.

"Members of the brigade holding the Iranians are questioning them to determine whether their activities and intentions aimed to spread the doctrine of Shiite Islam," the security official said on condition of anonymity.

Egypt's prosecutor general appealed on Wednesday against the outcome of the trial of Hosni Mubarak and several of his senior officials over deaths in the uprising that unseated the veteran strongman.

The prosecutor called for the June 2 verdicts to be annulled and for a new trial to be held.

A bomb blast shook the department of military intelligence in the eastern city of Benghazi early Wednesday, causing material damage to the building, Libyan security sources said.

"The department of military intelligence was bombed," a senior security officer told Agence France Presse, adding that the level of damage to the two-story building suggested it was hit by an improvised explosive device.

The World Food Program has sent supplies to Syria's commercial capital Aleppo to help tackle shortages triggered by escalating clashes between troops and rebels, the U.N. agency said on Wednesday.

The WFP "has sent food assistance for distribution to 28,000 people in Aleppo over the next few days, following reports of shortages of food, gas and electricity following weeks of violence," a statement said.

Turkey's military on Wednesday tested its tanks' speed and maneuverability during an exercise in Turkey's southeastern border near Syria, reported the Anatolia news agency.

The exercise comes after Turkey sent a convoy of tanks, weapons and ground-to-air missile batteries to the border with Syria, strengthening its defenses there as intensified on the other side of the border.

Tribal negotiations are ongoing with Yemeni authorities to free within "two days" an Italian embassy security agent kidnapped in Sanaa over the weekend, his abductor told a local news website on Wednesday.

"There is tribal mediation... and hopefully the matter will be resolved tonight, tomorrow, or over the coming two days," Ali Naser Huraidkan said according to a private Internet site close to Yemeni tribes, marebpress.net.

The Czech embassy in Damascus will represent U.S. interests in Syria after Poland, which had been taking on that function for the Americans after they pulled out in February, withdrew its diplomats last week.

"Following a request from the United States, the Czech Republic has agreed to represent U.S. consular interests in Syria," a Czech foreign ministry statement said Wednesday. Talks on "technical details" are underway, it added.

Syria's rebels said on Wednesday that a government-in-exile headed by a splinter group of dissidents was "stillborn" and that it did not represent the opposition's demands.

The rebels' comments came a day after exiled dissident Haytham al-Maleh, 81, said in Cairo he had been tasked by a coalition of independent dissidents to create a government-in-exile based in the Egyptian capital.

Syria's military has used fighter jets to fire on Aleppo, the country's second city, the U.N. Supervision Mission in Syria (UNSMIS) spokeswoman told Agence France Presse on Wednesday.

"Yesterday they (U.N. observers) saw firing from a fighter aircraft" on Aleppo, said Sausan Ghosheh. "They are jets."