Norway said Thursday it would increase its financial aid to Syrian refugees to nearly 120 million euros ($134 million) and would send another vessel to help patrol the Mediterranean.

In the government's spring budget bill to be presented on May 12, humanitarian aid to refugees in Syria and neighboring countries will be increased by 250 million kroner to 1.0 billion kroner (119.1 million euros, $134 million) this year, Prime Minister Erna Solberg told parliament.

The middle of a desert is not the kind of place you'd expect to be able to sit down with a good book, watch a movie or surf the Internet.

But that is exactly what children who have fled the deadly conflict in Syria are now able to do at Azraq refugee camp in Jordan.

The leader of an exiled Iranian opposition group addressed U.S. lawmakers for the first time Wednesday and warned of the links between Shiite Iran and the Sunni Muslim Islamic State (IS) militants.

"It was the mullahs' regime who helped the creation of ISIS... and the killing of Sunnis in Iraq helped the emergence of ISIS," Maryam Rajavi told House lawmakers, using another acronym for the IS jihadist group that has captured a swathe of territory in Iraq and Syria.

Twenty-five fighters from the Islamic State group were killed when a powerful blast rocked an explosives manufacturing plant in Syria's eastern Deir Ezzor province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said Wednesday.

It was not immediately clear whether the explosion was accidental or the result of a missile strike, the Britain-based Observatory said.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper pledged Can$122.8 million Wednesday to help Jordan cope with a massive influx of Syrian refugees and boost its counterterrorism capabilities.

Both Canada and Jordan are part of the U.S.-led military mission targeting the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria with airstrikes.

Air strikes by Syrian government forces killed at least 23 people, including six children, and wounded 50 on Wednesday in the northern provinces of Aleppo and Idlib, a monitor said.

In the south of Aleppo city, a small girl was among four civilians killed in the rebel-held neighborhood of Ferdus, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces on Wednesday left the key Syrian town of Kobane near the Turkish border after a half-year deployment to fight jihadists, a Turkish official told Agence France Presse.

The peshmerga, who had first deployed to Kobane in late October last year, successfully helped defeat Islamic State (IS) jihadists in the over two-month battle for the strategic town.

The army announced on Wednesday the arrest of two suspects linked to detained terrorist Ahmed Miqati, reported Voice of Lebanon radio (93.3).

It said that Lebanese Walid Ghazi and Syrian Imad Fares were detained in the Bekaa Sefrin region.

A deal to release captive servicemen held hostage by the al-Qaida-affiliate al-Nusra Front entered the last stages as a Qatari-appointed negotiator put the final touches on the agreement last week.

A source said in comments published in al-Mustaqbal newspaper on Wednesday that the release of the captive is awaiting a decision on the date and venue of a prisoners swap deal with the Nusra Front.

Rebels and al-Qaida's Syria affiliate clashed Tuesday with jihadists linked to the Islamic State group along Syria's border with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, a monitor and an opposition spokesman said.

Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told AFP that rebel groups, as well as al-Qaida affiliate al-Nusra Front, fought IS-linked Jaish al-Jihad in the border town of Qahtaniya in the southern province of Quneitra province.