Syria lashed out on Monday at comments by new international peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi describing the increasingly brutal 17-month conflict as a civil war.

"To speak of civil war in Syria contradicts reality and is found only in the head of conspirators," the foreign ministry said in a statement published by the official SANA news agency.

Iraq insisted on Monday that its trade with neighboring Iran was above board, and denied reports that it was helping the Islamic republic skirt sanctions by smuggling oil and secretly moving cash.

Ali Moussawi, spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said that Baghdad's trade and dealings with Tehran were below "the permitted level" for neighboring countries, and dismissed claims Iraq was selling oil on Iran's behalf as a "big lie".

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Monday was to meet King Abdullah II of Jordan, a key U.S. ally in the Middle East that has seen an influx of refugees from the conflict in neighboring Syria.

The two were scheduled to meet at 4:15 pm (2015 GMT) at the vice president's residence in the U.S. capital, the White House said, without providing further details.

French President Francois Hollande was due later Monday to meet with the new United Nations peace envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, Hollande's office said.

Brahimi, a veteran diplomat troubleshooter, was named on Friday to take over from Kofi Annan after Annan quit because of the lack of international support for his peace plan.

A high-ranking Syrian military official died last week at a Russian military hospital and the body was covertly transported to Damascus, well-informed sources told the government-funded Russia Today television.

“The Syrian military figure died of serious wounds incurred during the acts of violence that have been raging there since months,” the sources told Russia Today.

Turkey cannot handle more than 100,000 Syrian refugees and instead proposes a U.N. buffer zone inside Syria to shelter them, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in remarks published Monday.

"If the number of refugees increases to 100,000, we will not be able to shelter them in Turkey. We have to welcome them in Syrian territory" under U.N. auspices, Davutoglu told the newspaper Hurriyet.

The Muslim Eid al-Fitr holiday got off to a bloody start in Syria, with at least 84 people dying across the country, most of them soldiers, and Damascus rocked by clashes, a watchdog said on Monday.

The fresh surge of violence on Sunday, the first day of the Eid festivities, came as new U.N. peace envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, said it was no longer a question of "preventing civil war" in Syria but rather ending it.

The Israeli army has deployed an Iron Dome air defense system, designed to intercept and destroy rockets, days after two rockets were fired at the town of Eilat near the border with Egypt, a military spokeswoman said Monday.

"An Iron Dome battery has been deployed in the town of Eilat as part of tests, momentarily modifying the sites where these systems are deployed," she said but did not give further details.

Eight months since American troops withdrew from Iraq, Baghdad has signaled a readiness to bolster military ties with the U.S., America's top general said ahead of a visit to the country.

General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, who is due to fly to Iraq this week after talks in Afghanistan, will be the highest-ranking American to travel there since the end of the troubled U.S. military mission in the country.

The United Nation's troubled observer mission to Syria has officially ended after being recalled amid escalating violence as world powers fail to agree how to end months of bloodshed in the country.

The mandate of the U.N. Supervision Mission in Syria (UNSMIS) expired at midnight Sunday after a roughly four-month deployment in which its work was hobbled by growing unrest that has cost tens of thousands of lives.