Army rocket fire on a central Syrian village on Wednesday killed at least 12 people including women and children, a watchdog said, as warplanes attacked rebel enclaves near central Qusayr.

Aircraft also struck Karam Huweimed and Tariq al-Bab in the northern city of Aleppo, as well as a rebel-held town nearby, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Syria on Wednesday told France to "stop interfering" in the country's internal affairs, a day after Paris criticized an amnesty decree issued by President Bashar Assad.

"President Assad's decree was issued on the eve of Syria's independence day from France's occupation," state news agency SANA said, citing a foreign ministry statement.

Jordan, already straining from hosting hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees, is increasingly feeling the heat from its own citizens who are fed up with the growing influx.

Jordan says it is hosting more than 500,000 Syrian refugees and the authorities last week opened a new refugee camp in the Mrigeb al-Fuhud area east of the capital Amman as thousands continue to flee the war across the border.

At least two Grad rockets fired from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula exploded in the Israeli Red Sea resort of Eilat on Wednesday, causing no casualties, in an attack claimed by a Salafi jihadist group.

It was the first rocket attack on the southern resort city in eight months, with the Israeli army saying they were fired from the Egyptian Sinai, although there was no immediate confirmation from Cairo where a senior military official said troops were "investigating" the incident.

A huge earthquake that struck Iran's rural southeast region killed one woman and injured more than two dozen other people, media reports Wednesday cited officials as saying.

"A woman was killed by a mountain landslide following the quake," Alireza Shahraki, governor of Khash city, was quoted by ISNA news agency as saying.

Two Saudi nationals were injured in the bombings in Boston but neither is accused of involvement even though one was initially put under armed guard at a hospital, the embassy said Tuesday.

The Saudi embassy in Washington said that two of its nationals, one man and one woman, were wounded in Monday's blasts. Police earlier said that the 20-year-old man was being guarded but was not under detention.

Caretaker prime minister Salam Fayyad, in his first public comments since he resigned, called on Wednesday for a general election to rebuild the Palestinian political system.

The Palestinians "need ... a general election, as the only way to rebuild our political system and achieve our national goals," he said in his weekly radio address as premier.

The Pentagon has requested $220.3 million in 2014 to bolster Israel's "Iron Dome" missile defense system despite broader cuts to U.S. military spending, according to budget documents.

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency also is asking for an additional $175.9 million in fiscal year 2015 for Israel's homegrown missile defense network, according to the agency's budget proposal posted online.

U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is due in Israel for an official visit on April 21 on his first trip to the region since taking over as Pentagon chief, an Israeli official confirmed to Agence France Presse on Tuesday.

According to the official, Hagel will be arriving "on Sunday" for "a short working visit."

Qatar's prime minister on Tuesday called on the international community to support efforts to end the Syrian conflict after talks with the German chancellor who warned the whole region faced destabilization.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani stressed the need for a solution "as quickly as possible", saying the Syrian people had sacrificed a lot during more than two years of violence.