U.N. inspectors investigating apparent deadly poisonous gas attacks in Syria headed to a military hospital Friday on the last day of their probe, a security official said.

The official told Agence France Presse they were going to the hospital in the Mazzeh district of the Syrian capital, where victims of gas attacks are reportedly being treated.

French President Francois Hollande said a military strike on Syria could come by Wednesday and that Britain's surprise rejection of armed intervention would not affect his government's stand.

"France wants firm and proportionate action against the Damascus regime," he said in an interview to Le Monde daily on Friday. The French parliament is due to meet on Wednesday for an emergency Syria session.

Israel has struck a deal to deport tens of thousands of illegal African migrants to Uganda, Haaretz newspaper reported on Friday.

It said that a court gag order barring identification of the destination country had been lifted at its request, but that the government still refused to give any details of the deal.

A drone strike Friday killed an al-Qaida leader in Yemen, a tribal source said, the latest in a string of attacks on what is considered the extremist group's most dangerous network.

The source told Agence France Presse the early morning strike on a vehicle traveling in Manasseh village in the southern province of Bayda killed Qaeed al-Dhahab and two other men.

Russia opposes any United Nations Security Council resolution that would permit military strikes against the Syrian regime of President Bashar Assad, a senior diplomat said Friday.

"Russia opposes any resolution of the U.N. Security Council indicating the probability of the use of force, (or) any resolution that could be used for military action against Syria," Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov told the ITAR-TASS news agency.

Israel deployed its Iron Dome missile defense system in Tel Aviv on Friday, as the United States weighed military strikes on neighboring Syria, local media said.

Army radio said that a battery of the mobile system was set up during the morning in the greater Tel Aviv area.

An al-Qaida front group claimed a wave of bombings across Baghdad in a statement on Friday, part of a surge in violence sparking worries of a return to all-out bloodshed.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant said the attacks carried out on Wednesday, when nationwide violence killed 75 people and wounded more than 200, were retribution for the executions this month of people convicted of terror-related offences.

A car bomb attack wounded four Bahraini policemen in a Shiite Muslim village near the capital Manama, the authorities in the Sunni-ruled kingdom said on Friday.

Bahrain has been rocked by sporadic violence since its security forces crushed a month of massive Arab Spring-inspired democracy protests by its Shiites in 2011.

Hundreds of people protested at New York's Times Square on Thursday over possible U.S. plans to strike Syria's regime which it believes to be behind a deadly chemical attack.

Supporters of Syrian strongman Bashar Assad, backers of the opposition who want a U.S. intervention, and Americans who say they can't stomach another war all took to the iconic Manhattan Square.

The United States is still seeking an "international coalition" in response to Syria's alleged use of chemical weapons, despite a vote against military action by British MPs, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Friday.

"Our approach is to continue to find an international coalition that will act together," Hagel told a news conference.