Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday he was "dismayed" that a Saudi-led coalition did not consult the U.N. Security Council prior to carrying out strikes in Yemen and urged negotiations to resolve the crisis.

"Right now (the operation) does not have any foundation in international law. Of course we were a little dismayed, to put it mildly, that the operation was begun without any consultations," he said in an interview with RIA-Novosti news agency.

The U.N. Security Council is expected to adopt on Friday a resolution to step up the fight against Islamic extremists in Libya but without lifting the arms embargo.

Libya, backed by Egypt, had asked for an end to the arms embargo to allow the embattled government to build up its army and take on groups such as Islamic State (IS).

About 440,000 Syrians are now trapped in areas besieged by fighting, more than double the total from last month, as the war reaches "breathtaking levels of savagery", U.N. aid chief Valerie Amos said Thursday.

Amos told the U.N. Security Council that Islamic State fighters are laying siege to government-controlled neighborhoods in Deir Ezzor, northeast Syria, adding 228,000 people to the growing list of civilians in need of aid.

The U.N. Security Council on Sunday voiced unanimous support for Yemen's President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi and the unity of the country, amid warnings it is sliding towards civil war.

"The Security Council reaffirms its strong commitment to the unity, sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Yemen, and its commitment to stand by the people of Yemen," the 15 members said in a statement during an emergency meeting in New York.

Russia proposed a U.N. Security Council draft resolution Thursday asking Kiev to "immediately start consultations" with pro-Russian separatists on elections within their eastern Ukraine strongholds.

The Russian text cites a paragraph from a February peace accord, which "provides for discussion and agreement on questions related to local elections in certain areas of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions."

The U.N. Security Council called on the international community Thursday to help Lebanon in its efforts to host more than a million refugees from neighboring Syria.

An estimated 1.18 million Syrians have fled their country's bloody conflict to take refuge in Lebanon, which has struggled to deal with the influx as the war enters its fifth year.

The U.N. Security Council will hold a closed door meeting on Crimea Thursday, one year after Russia wrested the territory away from Ukraine, diplomats said.

Moscow, which claims it was forced to take over Crimea to protect ethnic Russians after the ouster of Ukraine's Kremlin-backed government, is refusing to attend the meeting, diplomats said on Wednesday.

U.N. investigators offered Tuesday to share information from secret lists of alleged Syria war criminals with prosecutors, to help bring perpetrators to justice.

The commission of inquiry on the human rights situation in Syria has been compiling lists of people suspected of committing war crimes in the brutal Syrian conflict for the past four years, but kept them secret for use in future prosecution.

Aid agencies have found themselves frustrated and increasingly bitter as the Syrian conflict enters a fifth, blood-soaked year and those in need of help become ever-harder to reach.

"By comparison, Somalia and Afghanistan seem simple," said Jean-Herve Bradol of the Centre For Reflection on Humanitarian Knowledge and Action, a French think-tank linked to Doctors Without Borders.

U.N. Security Council member Spain called Thursday for a deal to end unrest in Libya within weeks and said a U.N. resolution would be needed to approve any NATO intervention there.

Concerned by violence and the rise of Islamist groups in Libya, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo appeared in Madrid alongside NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to tout security cooperation in the region.