A relief aid coordination meeting on strife-torn Syria opened Thursday in Geneva, with representatives from U.N. agencies, aid groups such as the Red Cross, and member states in attendance.

The closed-door conference chaired by the John Ging, coordination chief of U.N.'s Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, would look at current needs and the possibilities of accessing the country, a spokesman said.

Syrian security forces on Thursday killed 62 people across the country, monitors said, as the army sent further troop reinforcements to the northwestern province of Idlib, where activists said they fear an assault similar to the one that devastated the Baba Amr neighborhood of Homs.

Fifty-two people were killed in the central province of Homs, including 44 who were summarily executed, two in Idlib province, two in the Damascus suburb of Daraya, three in the eastern province of Deir al-Zour, one in the central province of Hama, one in the southern province of Daraa and one in the northern province of Aleppo, the LCC reported.

Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired a mortar into southern Israel Thursday morning which exploded without causing casualties or damage, a police spokesman said.

"A mortar was fired in the general direction of a kibbutz, it didn't cause injuries or damage," Micky Rosenfeld told Agence France Presse.

Egypt's Foreign Minister Mohammed Amr on Thursday warned of regional consequences should the crisis in Syria "explode", during talks with U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria Kofi Annan, his spokesman said.

Amr said that an "explosion" of the situation in Syria "would not only have internal consequences but will spread to the whole region," Amr Roshdy told reporters.

Two explosions on Thursday struck security posts in the northern Syrian town of Aazaz, site of fierce clashes between government and rebel troops, a monitoring group said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in a statement that one blast targeted an intelligence office and the second a police station.

The Yemeni army has killed seven suspected al-Qaida militants in an artillery strike on Zinjibar, an extremist stronghold in the restive southern Abyan province, a military official said on Thursday.

The assault follows one of the deadliest al-Qaida attacks on Yemeni security forces in the southern outskirts of Zinjibar on Sunday that killed 185 troops.

United Nations and Arab League special envoy to Syria Kofi Annan on Thursday urged the Syrian opposition to cooperate to resolve the conflict that has left thousands dead in the past year.

Former U.N. chief Annan, speaking to reporters in Cairo, urged "the Syrian opposition to come together to work with us to find a solution that will respect the aspirations of the Syrian people."

Syrian opposition leader Burhan Ghalioun on Thursday welcomed the defection of the deputy oil minister and told Agence France Presse he expects more government officials and politicians to follow suit.

"I hail the deputy (oil) minister who defected and I call on all government members and public servants ... to abandon this regime and join the ranks of the revolution for freedom and dignity," said Ghalioun, head of the Syrian National Council, the main opposition group.

Israel's leaders are "wantonly disregarding" the country's ability to cope with a war as tensions rise over a possible confrontation with Iran, an MP in charge of home front preparations has told Agence France Presse.

Zeev Bielsky, who heads the parliamentary committee for home front preparedness, said there was a dire shortage of gas masks ready for use in the event of a war.

The United States offered Israel advanced weaponry in return for it committing not to attack Iran's nuclear facilities this year, Israeli daily Maariv reported on Thursday.

Citing unnamed Western diplomats and intelligence sources, the report said that during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to Washington this week, the U.S. administration offered to supply Israel with advanced bunker-busting bombs and long-range refueling planes.