A dozen countries are to attend a hastily called meeting in Tehran on Thursday to discuss ways to end the violence in Syria, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said, without saying who was coming.

"The consultative meeting on Syria will be held tomorrow in Tehran with 12 to 13 countries from Asia, Africa and Latin America" represented, Salehi said on Wednesday, the official news agency IRNA reported.

France on Wednesday confirmed the U.N. Security Council will hold a ministerial meeting on the Syria conflict on August 30 focused on the humanitarian situation in the country and its neighbors.

"Despite the divisions that have prevailed in recent months, the Security Council cannot remain silent about the tragedy being played out in Syria," French foreign ministry deputy spokesman Vincent Floreani said.

Kuwaiti lawmakers on Wednesday warned the government of the Gulf state against taking part in a meeting in Iran over the Syrian crisis, accusing Tehran of aiding the Damascus regime.

"Kuwait's participation in Tehran meeting is rejected because Iran hands are stained with the blood of the Syrian people," opposition Islamist MP Walid al-Tabatabai said in a statement.

Syria said its troops seized a rebel-held Aleppo district on Wednesday after storming it and "annihilating" most of the insurgents, as a long-threatened ground assault on the key city was launched.

The rebels promptly denied the claim, acknowledging that a "barbaric and savage attack" on the neighborhood of Salaheddin was under way but later saying they had recaptured much of what they lost.

Defected Syrian Prime Minister Riyad Hijab and his family crossed the border into Jordan on Wednesday morning, Information Minister Samih Maayatah said, clarifying previous reports he had done so at the weekend.

"Hijab and members of his family entered Jordan during the early hours of Wednesday," Maayatah, also government spokesman, told AFP without elaborating.

Some 2,400 people crossed into Turkey overnight to escape the escalating violence in Syria, Turkey’s government-run news agency reported on Wednesday.

The Anadolu Agency said that the crowd included 37 Syrian army officials two of whom were generals and two colonels.

Syrian tanks stormed a rebel-held district of Aleppo on Wednesday, sparking fierce clashes that a security official said marked the start of a long-threatened ground assault on the key battleground city.

The assault on the country's commercial capital came as Amnesty International raised concerns about the plight of civilians in the city and warned both sides they would be held accountable for any attacks on civilians.

Gunmen shot dead an Iraqi lawyer, his judicial investigator son and six of their family members early on Wednesday, after al-Qaida warned it would target judges and lawyers in a new campaign.

The shooting took place at the home of Khayrallah Shati, a lawyer in the town of Baiji, 200 kilometers (120 miles) north of the capital, killing him, his wife, five sons and another relative who was staying with them, a police officer said.

The Syrian army shelled several districts of Aleppo before dawn on Wednesday, killing 12 people in the northern city while another civilian died elsewhere in the province, a monitor said.

Among the dead were a woman and her two children, killed when a shell landed on their house in al-Mashatiyah neighborhood, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

"Retired" members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards and army are among the 48 Iranians taken hostage in Syria by rebels, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said on Wednesday, the ISNA news agency reported.

But he said those former military personnel were exclusively on a religious pilgrimage to Damascus when they were seized on Saturday.