Britain intends to resume the delivery of non-lethal aid to rebels in Syria after it was suspended in December following advances by Islamist groups, Foreign Secretary William Hague has announced.

The £1 million ($1.7 million, 1.2 million euros) worth of communications equipment, vehicles, generators and medical kits will be delivered to the Free Syrian Army (FSA) "as soon as is practical", he said.

The Syrian government and rebels have reached a deal under which opposition fighters besieged in the central city of Homs will withdraw during a ceasefire, an NGO said on Friday.

The accord will mean all but one district of the city, once dubbed the "capital of the revolution," will be back under government control.

Al-Qaida's leader ordered the group's Syrian affiliate, the al-Nusra Front, to end fighting with its jihadist rivals, in an audiotape posted online on Friday.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, in a message to Al-Nusra chief Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, ordered that "all soldiers of the front immediately cease fighting" other jihadist groups.

Suicide bombers blew up two vehicles in the central Syrian province of Hama on Friday, killing at least 18 people, including 11 children, state media reported.

The bombers hit the towns of Jibrin and Al-Humeiri, state television and official news agency SANA said, blaming "terrorists" for the attacks.

President Michel Suleiman on Friday appealed for the election of a “made in Lebanon” head of state, rejected foreign interference in the presidential elections and called the boycott of the polls “undemocratic.”

“The presidential and parliamentary elections should be held on time and vacuum avoided,” Suleiman told Lebanese diplomats at Baabda Palace.

Syria's air force killed at least 20 people, including 17 children, on Wednesday in the latest strike on battered Aleppo city, as civilians bear the brunt of the civil war.

The air strikes came a day after at least 100 people, including some 80 civilians, died in a twin car bomb attack on a pro-regime area of Homs claimed by the Al-Qaeda affiliated Al-Nusra Front.

U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos said Wednesday that a Security Council measure designed to provide aid to millions of desperate Syrians was not working.

Instead of alleviating the misery of more than nine million who urgently need help, a humanitarian crisis has worsened since the body adopted Resolution 2139 in February, she warned.

A massive refugee camp opened Wednesday in the eastern desert of Jordan for Syrians fleeing the war in their country with the U.N. urging more aid in the long run.

The Azraq camp can accommodate up to 50,000 people but the U.N. agency for refugees UNHCR says it can be expanded to take in 130,000, making it one of the biggest in the world.

An air raid on a rebel-held neighborhood of Syria's main northern city Aleppo hit a school, killing at least 18 people, 10 of them children, Wednesday, a monitoring group said.

At least one teacher was also among the dead in the raid on the Ansari district of the former commercial hub, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Syria's parliament announced Wednesday that six more people have expressed a wish to stand for the presidency in a June 3 election widely expected to return Bashar Assad to power.

That brings to 17 the total number of would-be candidates for an election that has been mocked as a "farce" by the opposition and as a "parody of democracy" by the United States.