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.

Amnesty International expressed alarm about the plight of civilians around Aleppo, saying satellite images show intensifying use of heavy weapons near residential areas of Syria's second city.

The human rights watchdog warned the forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and rebels that attacks on civilians would be documented and the culprits held accountable.

Egyptian helicopter gunships killed 20 militants in in the Sinai on Wednesday, state media and the army said, days after 16 soldiers were killed in an attack attributed to Islamist extremists.

The air strikes on Tumah village -- the military's first in Sinai for decades -- were carried out as security forces massed near Rafah on the Gaza border for what they called a decisive confrontation with the militants.

An Iranian woman, jailed by the United States for attempting to export military equipment to Tehran, has been freed and arrived in Oman on Tuesday, the government in Muscat announced.

A foreign ministry spokesman thanked the U.S. government for releasing Shahrazad Mir Gholikhan "on humanitarian grounds and following efforts made by Oman", Oman's state news agency Ona said.

Outgoing U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan will not send a representative to a meeting on the Syria conflict to be hosted by Iran on Thursday, a U.N. spokesman said.

Iran has called a ministerial meeting of states that have taken a "realistic and principled stand" on the Syrian crisis. Iran, a key ally of Syria's President Bashar Assad, has said it expects representatives from 10 countries to attend.