BEIRUT (AP) — France will not carry out punitive missile strikes against Syria on its own and is awaiting a decision from the U.S. Congress on possible military action against Bashar Assad's regime, the French president said Tuesday.

As the Obama administration worked to build support ahead of the Congress vote, the U.S. and Israel conducted a joint missile test in the eastern Mediterranean in an apparent signal of military readiness. In the operation, a missile was fired from the sea toward the Israeli coast to test the tracking by the country's missile defense system.

The U.S. and France accuse the Syrian government of using chemical weapons in an Aug. 21 attack on rebel-held suburbs of Damascus that killed hundreds of people. President Barack Obama and his French counterpart, Francois Hollande, are pushing for a military response to punish Assad for his alleged use of poison gas against civilians — though U.S. officials say any action will be limited in scope, not aimed at helping to remove Assad.

Obama appeared on the verge of launching missile strikes before abruptly announcing on Saturday that he would first seek congressional approval. Congress returns from its summer recess next week.

On Tuesday, the White House won backing for military action from two powerful Republicans — House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner and House majority leader Eric Cantor.

In Paris, Hollande said that the U.S. vote "will have consequences on the coalition that we will have to create." He did not specify whether that meant a military coalition.

"A large coalition must therefore be created on the international scale, with the United States — which will soon take its decision — (and) with Europe ... and Arab countries," Hollande said.

If Congress votes no, France "will take up its responsibilities by supporting the democratic opposition (in Syria) in such a way that a response is provided," he added.

France's government on Monday released an extract of intelligence gathered by two leading French intelligence agencies alleging that Assad's regime was behind the attack and at least two other, smaller-scale ones earlier this year.

Hollande added Tuesday that France had indications the nerve agent sarin was used in the Aug. 21 attack, a claim U.S. officials have also made.

The French parliament will debate the Syria issue Wednesday, but no vote is scheduled. France's constitution doesn't require such a vote for military intervention unless its lasts longer than four months, though some French lawmakers have urged Hollande to call one anyway.

The U.S. and France say the alleged chemical attack violates international conventions. Russia, which with Iran has been a staunch backer of Assad throughout the conflict, has brushed aside Western evidence of an alleged Syrian regime role.

At the United Nations, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned that any "punitive" action could unleash more turmoil and bloodshed in that nation's civil war.

"I take note of the argument for action to prevent a future use of chemical weapons. At the same time, we must consider the impact of any punitive measure on efforts to prevent further bloodshed and facilitate the political resolution of the conflict," Ban said.

With the Middle East anxious as it awaits a decision about strikes, Israel and the U.S. tested the Jewish state's Arrow 3 missile-defense system over the Mediterranean.

A medium-range decoy missile, known as a Sparrow, was fired in the Mediterranean, and the system successfully detected and tracked it, the Israeli Defense Ministry said. The decoy was not carrying a warhead and the system did not intercept it, the ministry said.

In a statement Tuesday, Pentagon spokesman George Little said the U.S. provided technical assistance and support to the Israeli test.

He said the test was "long planned to help evaluate the Arrow Ballistic Missile Defense system's ability to detect, track, and communicate information about a simulated threat to Israel."

He said the test had nothing to do with the U.S. consideration of military action in Syria.

Nonetheless, it served as a reminder to Syria and its patron, Iran, that Israel is pressing forward with development of a "multilayered" missile-defense system. Both Syria and Iran, and their Lebanese ally Hezbollah, possess vast arsenals of rockets and missiles.

The Arrow 3, expected to be operational around 2016, would be the first such "multilayer" missile-defense system, designed to intercept long-range missiles such the Iranian Shahab before they re-enter the atmosphere.

Last year, Israel also successfully tested a system designed to intercept missiles with ranges of up to 300 kilometers (180 miles) which is expected to be operational by early 2015.

Another system for short-range rockets successfully shot down hundreds fired from the Gaza Strip during eight days of fighting in November, and more recently intercepted a rocket fired from Lebanon.

Meanwhile in Syria, regime troops recaptured the town of Ariha, a busy commercial center in the restive northern province of Idlib following days of heavy bombardment, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Ariha has changed hands several times in the past two years. Rebels had succeeded in wrestling it from government control late last month.

Since the outbreak of the Syria conflict in March 2011, the two sides have fought to a stalemate, though the Assad regime has retaken the offensive in recent months. Rebel fighters control large rural stretches in northern and eastern Syria, while Assad is holding on to most of the main urban areas.

The Syrian conflict, which began as a popular uprising against Assad in March 2011, later degenerated into a civil war that has killed more than 100,000 people.

The U.N. refugee agency announced Tuesday that the number of Syrians who have fled the country has surpassed the 2 million mark.

Along with more than four million people displaced inside Syria, this means more than six million Syrians have been uprooted, out of an estimated population of 23 million.

Antonio Guterres, the head of the Office for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said Syria is hemorrhaging an average of almost 5,000 citizens a day across its borders, many of them with little more than the clothes they are wearing. Nearly 1.8 million refugees have fled in the past 12 months alone, he said.

The agency's special envoy, actress Angelina Jolie, said "some neighboring countries could be brought to the point of collapse" if the situation keeps deteriorating at its current pace. Most Syrian refugees have fled to Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.

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Associated Press writers Karin Laub in Beirut, Daniel Estrin in Jerusalem, Sylvie Corbet and Jamey Keaten in Paris, and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this report.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Two South Texas counties have among the highest rates of people without health insurance in the nation, with working Hispanic men in South Texas the most likely to not have coverage, according to data released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Hidalgo County has the highest rate among urban counties at 38.9 percent, and MaverickCounty has the highest rate among medium-sized counties at 35.1 percent.

Texas continues to have the highest uninsured rate in the country, with about one in four people having no coverage of any kind. Massachusetts, which requires residents to have coverage, has the lowest uninsured rate in the nation at 4.9 percent.

The Census Bureau's Small Area Health Insurance Estimates are a statistical analysis of the American Community Survey data and other census information combined with federal income tax, Medicaid, food stamps and County Business Patterns records. The dataset is for 2011, the latest year available.

There are vast differences in uninsured rates based on location, ethnicity, income, gender and age. Hispanic males were the least likely to have health insurance nationally, but in Texas the rate was 67.4 percent of Hispanic men between the ages of 18-64 who earn less than $23,000 a year. That is an estimated 950,000 people.

Under the Affordable Care Act, 320,000 of those men will be required to purchase subsidized health insurance, but because Gov. Rick Perry rejected a federal plan to expand Medicaid to include the working poor, more than 630,000 men will not be eligible for the health care program for the poor or subsidized insurance because they make too little.

Texas Medicaid is primarily for children, the disabled the elderly poor, with very few childless adults eligible.

The uninsured rate for white men with the same income was only 42 percent, or 303,000 people. The rate for blacks was 47 percent, or 155,000 men. Among Texas's most populous counties, Dallas County had the highest rate at 30.5 percent, but Harris County had the most people at more than 1 million.

The five counties with more than 25,000 residents that had the highest uninsured rates were all in South Texas ranging from 34.6 percent in Starr County to 38.9 percent in Hidalgo County. For Eddie Olivarez, chief administrative officer of Hidalgo County's Health and Human Services department, the numbers were all too familiar.

"We always wind up being one, two or three," he said.

The rate is the result of the county's transition from an agriculture-based economy to a service-oriented one, and its location on the Texas-Mexico border, he said. Hidalgo has a fast-growing population, but not the kinds of jobs that offer private health insurance.

So Hidalgo County is one of many counties across the state to pass resolutions calling for the expansion of Medicaid to include the working poor. Otherwise, those individuals end up in local emergency rooms where local residents have to pick up the tab either through higher county taxes or higher premiums on their private insurance.

Perry and other Republican leaders, though, remain adamantly opposed.

"Texas measures its health care success by the options that are provided for coverage, and the efforts to create ones that are affordable," Perry spokesman Josh Havens said. "Medicaid is a broken system, and we think it would be irresponsible to expand a program that is unsustainable."

Perry has instead called on the federal government to provide Texas with all of the available federal funds for Medicaid without any strings attached. Perry rejected a federal proposal to expand the existing Medicaid system with the federal government providing $100 billion over the next 10 years in return for the state spending $15 billion.

In the meantime, the Rio Grande Valley is pinning much of its hope on the planned University of Texas medical school. The area's hospitals and municipalities have banded together to drive the project with the idea that the new doctors it will churn out will increase access to health care, Olivarez said.

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AP Correspondent Chris Sherman contributed to this story from McAllen.

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On the Internet: Small Area Health Insurance Estimates:http://www.census.gov/did/www/sahie/index.html