Civil unrest is increasing the risk of hunger for 1.4 million people in Syria, which must raise cereal imports by a third to offset a loss in output, the United Nations' food agency said Thursday.

"Continued civil unrest in the Syrian Arab Republic since mid-March 2011 has raised serious concern over the state of food security, particularly for vulnerable groups," the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) said.

Amnesty International on Thursday called on Egypt to refuse a shipment of weapons from the United States because of the risk they will be used "to commit human rights violations."

The rights watchdog says the Dutch-flagged vessel, MV Schippersgracht, which left the U.S. Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point (MOTSU), is "carrying a class of dangerous goods that covers cartridges for weapons, fuses and other ammunition" and is headed to Egypt's Port Said.

The bodies of 23 torture victims were found on Thursday near the city of Idlib in northwest Syria that security forces captured earlier this week, a monitoring group said.

"Twenty-three bodies with marks of extreme torture were found near Mazraat Wadi Khaled, west of the city of Idlib," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights in a statement.

A young female Israeli soldier was in moderate condition on Thursday after being stabbed by a Palestinian on a section of Jerusalem's light railway in the city's annexed Arab east sector, police said.

The attack was the first such incident on the light rail system, which began operating throughout the city in August last year.

Huge crowds rallied in cities across Syria Thursday in a mass show of support for President Bashar al-Assad "to make the world hear our voice" on the first anniversary of a deadly anti-regime revolt.

State television showed tens of thousands of people waving Syrian flags and Assad's portrait in squares in Damascus, the northern city of Aleppo, Latakia on the Mediterranean coast, Suweida to the south and Hasaka in the northeast.

Around 1,000 Syrian refugees, including a defecting general, crossed into Turkey in the last 24 hours, the foreign ministry said on Thursday, the one-year anniversary of the Syrian revolt.

"The number of Syrian refugees currently staying in Turkey boomed by 1,000 in a single day and climbed to 14,700 total," ministry spokesperson Selçuk Unal told reporters in Ankara.

Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces are using "scorched earth methods" in cities across the country to crush a one-year-old revolt against his regime, Human Rights Watch charged on Thursday.

"City after city, town after town, Syria's security forces are using their scorched earth methods while the (U.N.) Security Council's hands remain tied by Russia and China," said HRW's Sarah Leah Whitson.

An Iranian aircraft carrying 40 tons of "medical aid" arrived in Syria on Thursday, the first of four such shipments destined for Tehran's regional ally, the official IRNA news agency reported.

The cargo which arrived in Damascus early Thursday was to be handed over to the Syrian Red Crescent, the agency said, quoting the Iranian ambassador to Syria, Mohammed Reza Raouf Sheibani.

The Netherlands has closed its embassy in Damascus because of the worsening security situation in Syria and to send a political sign to its leadership, the foreign ministry announced Wednesday.

"The shutdown is an expression of the revulsion we feel in the face of the appalling violence of the Syrian government," Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal said in a statement.

Saudi Arabia has shut down its embassy in Syria and has withdrawn all its staff, the foreign ministry announced Wednesday in a statement carried by state news agency SPA.

"Due the developments in Syria, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has shut down its embassy in Damascus and withdrawn all its diplomats and staff there," said the statement.