9.10am BST

Hello and welcome to the Middle East live blog. We’ll be reporting developments in the region live here throughout the day.

Syria

• [See UPDATE: "In interview video, Assad does not claim receipt of missiles"]

The Al-Manar TV channel owned by the Shia militant group Hezbollah, which has joined the Syrian civil war on Assad’s side, said it would air a full interview with the Syrian president later today. Israel has indicated it is likely to destroy anti-aircraft missiles if they fall into the hands of Hezbollah or other hostile groups. "I don't know how upset the Russians would be if, at some point between payment and the installation of this technology in Damascus by Russian experts, something was done to damage the weaponry. As long as no Russians were hurt and they got paid, I don't think they would care," an Israeli diplomat told the Guardian yesterday. The Russian move to fulfil its longstanding deal with Syria is widely seen as being retaliation for the EU’s move to drop its arms embargo on the Syrian rebels.

• Twelve people have been killed in fighting across Syria so far today, according to the Local Co-ordination Committees, a Syrian opposition group that yesterday threatened to split from the main Syrian National Coalition opposition. Seven were in Damascus and its suburbs, three in Deraa in the south-west, one in Raqqa in the north, and one in Idlib in the north-west. The LCCS said that yesterday 161 people were killed, including 53 in Latakia, on the west coast, and 27 in the capital. Their figures cannot be verified because media access to Syria is limited. The Syrian Network for Human Rights, an activist monitoring group, said 111 had died yesterday, 33 in Damascus. This map shows where all those places are.

• Plans for Syrian peace talks in Geneva next month appeared in danger of being derailed on Wednesday night as the country's divided opposition movement issued a fresh demand for Assad's government to be excluded from the political process, while Damascus insisted the Syrian president would stay in power until 2014 and possibly beyond – depending on “the circumstances in 2014 and the popular will”. His second seven-year term is up next year. Russia and France also clashed over whether Iran should be allowed to attend the talks, and diplomats suggested that the mid-June target date might have to be pushed back. Turkey warned that if the negotiations failed, it would mark the end of the road for diplomacy and open the gates to the wholesale arming of opposition forces. The Syrian National Coalition opposition umbrella group put out a statement saying:

The Syrian Coalition wants to highlight its commitment to the revolution’s fundamentals and to the political framework approved on February 15th, 2013, which requires the head of the regime, security and military leadership to step down and be excluded from the political process. The Syrian Coalition deems these goals necessary to lead to an effective political solution: Halt the murder and destruction perpetrated by the regime. Empower revolutionary forces to defend oppressed Syrian people. Halt Iran and Hezbollah's invasion of Syria and expel them from the country.

• The British government has written to United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon alleging three new incidents of chemical weapons use by Syrian government forces, Ewen MacAskill reports from New York. The allegations are to be passed to a UN investigations team set up to look into claims that the Assad regime is using chemical weapons against rebel forces. The new allegations add to pressure on the Obama administration, which is reluctant to be drawn into another Middle East conflict. Barack Obama vowed earlier this year that if evidence emerged of use of chemical weapons by the Assad government, it would be tantamount to having crossed a red line. But he has since backtracked, saying that there has so far been no definitive evidence.

• One of America's most experienced Middle East diplomats, Robert Ford, is to stand down as ambassador to Syria this summer after two turbulent years in the post, according to various US media outlets. Ford has spent much of his time outside the country, having been withdrawn for his own safety and to signal US unhappiness with Bashar al-Assad's government.

• The Syrian National Coalition issued an “urgent appeal for relief efforts” for more than 1,000 injured civilians in Qusair, the western city that has been the site of fierce fighting between government troops plus Hezbollah, and opposition forces. “The city of Qusair is currently suffering from an acute shortage of doctors, paramedics and first aid kits,” the SNC said. “These shortages and the urgent need for relief efforts must trigger international relief organisations to respond immediately and save the wounded civilians.”

Iraq

• The commissioners of the Iraq pavilion at the Venice Biennale art exhibition were determined to look beyond the “Newsnight version” of the country, reports Charlotte Higgins. Tamara Chalabi and Jonathan Watkins “went on the road to find and meet artists from Kurdistan to Basra and Baghdad, ranging from the caustically witty political cartoonist Abdul Raheem Yassir to photographer Jamal Penjweny, whose series of photographs Saddam Is Here shows ordinary Iraqis in everyday situations holding an image of Saddam over their own faces like a mask.”

Tunisia

• Three Femen activists disrobed in front of the ministry of justice in the Tunisian capital on Wednesday to protest against the jailing of a Tunisian member of the Ukrainian feminist group, quickly attracting an angry crowd.