Rebel fighters stormed an army post in Douma killing six soldiers, while intense shelling by regime forces sent residents of the Damascus suburb fleeing in panic, a watchdog and activists said on Tuesday.

Other rebel-held bastions in and around Damascus were also bombarded at dawn as the government said it was close to crushing the last pockets of resistance in the capital.

Jordanian riot police used tear gas to disperse Syrian refugees at a camp in the north of the country who set fire to tents and destroyed property in protest at their living conditions, a charity said Tuesday.

"Some 500 refugees demonstrated against their living conditions in the Zaatari camp," said Zayed Hammad, president of the charitable Muslim association Kitab wal Sunna, which provides aid for tens of thousands of refugees.

Yemeni forces killed three suspected Al-Qaida militants in a raid on their hideout in Aden, foiling a major plot to blow up targets in the restive southern port city, a security official said on Tuesday.

"We raided a house in the Mansoura district... clashes broke out, three Qaida operatives were killed and four members of the security forces were wounded," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Iran on Monday added its voice to warnings against Syria ever using chemical weapons in its increasingly large-scale war with anti-government insurgents.

Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said in New York that Iran could not support any country -- including ally Syria -- that used such weapons, calling this "a situation that will end everything."

Syria's foreign minister accused the United States and its allies Monday of supporting terrorism in Syria but said his government remains open to a political settlement of its civil war.

Speaking to the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said France, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United States "clearly induce and support terrorism in Syria with money, weapons and foreign fighters."

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon called Monday on the Syrian government to show "compassion" to its people in the midst of an increasingly vicious civil war against armed rebels.

Ban said after a meeting with the Syrian foreign minister at U.N. headquarters in New York that it was time for Damascus to lower the scale of its offensive against the insurgency.

The number of Syrians fleeing the conflict in their homeland and seeking refuge in Turkey has climbed close to the 100,000 threshold, Turkish authorities said Monday.

Turkey is currently home to 93,576 refugees housed in several camps in the southeast along the Syrian border, the AFAD disaster agency said in a statement.

The U.S. wants to oust the Damascus regime by raising fears overs its chemical weapons stockpiles, creating a scenario similar to that which led to the invasion of Iraq, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said in an interview broadcast Monday.

"This issue (chemical weapons) is an invention of the American administration," Muallem told Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen TV in excerpts of an interview to be broadcast in full later Monday.

September was the deadliest month in Iraq in more than two years, with 365 people killed in violence that Iraqi security forces are struggling to curb, official figures released on Monday showed.

Insurgents are regarded as weaker than when violence reached its peak in 2006 and 2007, but they remain capable of carrying out mass-casualty attacks across Iraq.

Army shelling and air raids killed dozens more civilians including children in Syrian flashpoints Monday, activists said, while rebels and loyalists fought close-quarter battles in Aleppo's main souk.

On the political front, Syria accused Washington of seeking to topple the Damascus regime by raising fears over its chemical weapons stockpiles and creating a scenario similar to that which led to the invasion of Iraq.