An A310 airliner carrying a French military medical team destined to help refugees on the Joranian-Syrian border took off from Paris on Thursday.

With around 25 medical and 25 logistics staff on board, the plane was to stop off in Istres on France's Mediterranean coast to pick up 20 tons of medical aid before flying to Amman.

Defected Syrian Prime Minister Riyad Hijab and his family crossed the border into Jordan on Wednesday morning, Information Minister Samih Maayatah said, clarifying previous reports he had done so at the weekend.

"Hijab and members of his family entered Jordan during the early hours of Wednesday," Maayatah, also government spokesman, told AFP without elaborating.

Jordan's King Abdullah II warned in an interview aired Tuesday that President Bashar Assad could make a "worst case scenario" retreat to an Alawite stronghold if he falls from power in Damascus.

The king peered into the mind of the embattled Syrian leader in an interview with CBS News "This Morning" and said that such an outcome to the Syria crisis could splinter the country and cause ethnic strife for decades to come.

The International Monetary Fund on Friday issued a $2 billion loan for Jordan to steady the country's battered economy and protect it from external "shocks" in the region.

The IMF executive board approved the three-year loan, making $385.35 million immediately available, the fund said in a statement.

Around 500 people demonstrated in Jordan's capital for a protest dubbed "Press Freedom Friday" to denounce repression of the media and demand widespread reforms, Agence France Presse reported.

The protest began after Friday prayers at Amman's al-Husseini mosque, with a procession headed by a large banner announcing "Friday for freedom of the press."

U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Jordan's King Abdullah II on Thursday discussed the question of a political transition in "a post-Bashar al-Assad Syria," Pentagon spokesman George Little said.

"They talked not only about how to deal with the current crisis that is being fuelled by the intolerable acts of the regime, but also the prospects for political transition in a post-Bashar al-Assad Syria," Little told reporters.

Syrian troops on Sunday killed two men as they tried to cross the border into neighboring Jordan, a local official said, as Syria’s state news agency said border guards killed a large number of "terrorists" who attempted to cross into Syria from Turkey.

"At least two men were shot dead by the Syrian army early this morning when they tried to cross the border into the kingdom, along with hundreds of Syrians," Zayed Hammad, head of the Ketab and Sunna Society, which provides aid to more than 50,000 Syrian refugees, told Agence France Presse.

Jordan on Sunday opened its first official refugee camp to help host tens of thousands of Syrians who have fled the mounting violence in its northern neighbor.

"I hope the ordeal of our Syrian brothers will vanish," Interior Minister Ghaleb Zubi told reporters as he and Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh opened the Zaatari camp, which can take up to 120,000 refugees, in Mafraq near the border with Syria.

Syrian troops opened fire on a group of civilians fleeing into neighboring Jordan, killing a three-year-old child, Jordanian officials said on Friday.

The president of Jordan's Kitab wal Sunna charity, which provides aid to some 50,000 Syrian refugees, said a Jordanian soldier who tried to help the fleeing civilians was wounded in Thursday night's shooting but that was denied by Information Minister Samih Maayatah.

The uprising in the neighboring Syria, which kicked off in March 2011, began to significantly have an impact on the Lebanese agricultural sector.