Syria's opposition set out detailed plans Wednesday for the transition to a democratic state without President Bashar Assad ahead of talks with ministers of EU, U.S. and regional powers in London.

The broad-based High Negotiations Committee (HNC) proposed a six-month negotiating phase between the regime and the opposition.

A bitter war of words between Iran and Saudi Arabia intensified Wednesday ahead of the annual hajj pilgrimage from which Iranians have been excluded for the first time in decades.

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blasted the "incompetence" of the Saudi royal family as he met with the families of victims of a deadly stampede during last year's hajj.

The Islamic State group has claimed a rocket attack that killed three Turkish soldiers in Syria, its first deadly attack on Turkish forces since they crossed the border two weeks ago.

"Soldiers of the caliphate... targeted two tanks belonging to the apostate Turkish army with guided rockets," the group said in a statement circulated on social media late on Tuesday.

U.N. investigators on Tuesday said aerial bombardment by Syrian forces and their ally Russia were mostly to blame for swelling numbers of civilian casualties in Syria's devastating conflict.

Dozens of people had to be treated for breathing problems in the Syrian battlefront city of Aleppo after regime helicopters dropped barrel bombs on a rebel-held district Tuesday, a monitor said.

The U.N. said Tuesday it has delivered food supplies to more than 30,000 residents of Qayyarah for the first time in two years after Iraqi forces expelled jihadists from the northern town.

A car bomb attack claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group killed at least seven people near a hospital in central Baghdad late Monday, police said.

Israel's army targeted Hamas posts in the Gaza Strip with tank fire early Tuesday after gunfire against its forces, the second such incident in recent days, officials said.

A Bahraini court will next month announce its verdict in the trial of prominent activist Nabeel Rajab whose detention has been condemned by rights groups, a judicial source said Monday.

Yellow-and-blue fighter jets sit neatly lined up on the tarmac at the air force academy in Libya's Misrata, no longer awaiting students but orders for strikes against the Islamic State group.