Iraqi Communications Minister Mohammed Tawfiq Allawi told Agence France Presse on Monday he quit his post, accusing Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of doing nothing to stop "political interference" in his ministry.

"I resigned because Maliki refused to... (Stop) political interference in my ministry," Allawi said by telephone from London, referring to demands he made in late July for an end to meddling in his ministry.

The Etzion settler bloc, which lies southwest of the Palestinian city of Bethlehem, is an "integral part" of Greater Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday.

"Efrat and Gush Etzion are an integral, basic and understood part of Greater Jerusalem," Netanyahu said while visiting Efrat settlement, in remarks relayed by his bureau.

The United Nations appealed on Monday for $54 million to help meet the growing needs of tens of thousands of Syrian refugees in Jordan, particularly children who "suffer most."

The U.N. Children's Fund UNICEF said in a statement the funds are "urgently" needed "to meet the emergency health, protection, and water and sanitation needs of the growing numbers of Syrian refugee children and their families arriving in Jordan."

Gunmen shot dead an Iraqi border forces brigadier general on Monday, among three people killed and six wounded in nationwide violence, security and medical officials said.

Brigadier General Abdul Hussein Mohsen was gunned down by several armed men while he was in the town of Taji, just north of Baghdad, an interior ministry official said.

Some 7,000 Syrian refugees have massed on the border with Turkey, waiting for more camps to be set up to accommodate those fleeing the fighting in Syria, a Turkish diplomat told Agence France Presse on Monday.

"5,000 refugees are waiting on Syrian side of the Oncupinar border crossing in Kilis province and 2,000 others at Reyhanli in Hatay province," said the diplomat.

A rebel Free Syrian Army group claimed it had shot down an army helicopter in Damascus on Monday and that the pilot had been killed, a spokesman said.

"It was in revenge for the Daraya massacre," Omar al-Qabooni, a spokesman for the Badr Battalion in Damascus told Agence France Presse via Skype, referring to the reported killing of at least 320 people in a town southwest of Damascus during a five-day government offensive.

At least 14 more bodies have been found in the town of Daraya near Damascus after activists reported a gruesome "massacre" there in a five-day assault by regime forces, a watchdog said on Monday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights had reported on Sunday the discovery of 320 bodies in Daraya after what opposition militants said was a brutal onslaught of shelling, summary executions and house-to-house raids by government troops.

Egypt on Sunday defended its idea of forming a regional contact group on Syria which would include Iran, a staunch Damascus ally, insisting that Tehran could "be part of the solution" to the Syrian crisis.

President Mohammed Morsi proposed at this month's Organization of Islamic Cooperation summit in Mecca creating such a group made up of Egypt and Iran, as well as Saudi Arabia and Turkey, two countries supporting the rebels fighting President Bashar Assad's regime.

Israeli police said on Sunday that they had arrested three minors from the West Bank settlement of Bat Ayin on suspicion of an August 16 petrol bomb attack which injured six Palestinians, one badly.

"Police have arrested three suspects, all of them between the ages of 12 and 13... under suspicion of being connected with the incident two weeks ago in which a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a Palestinian taxi," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told Agence France Presse.

Jordan on Sunday barred pro-Palestinian U.S. and European activists from trying to cross into the West Bank for delivering school supplies to students.

"Two buses carrying 100 activists were not allowed to leave the Jordanian side" of Allenby Bridge Crossing, also known as King Hussein Bridge between the West Bank and Jordan, Walid Atallah, a spokesman for the "Welcome to Palestine" campaign in Jordan, told Agence France Presse.