Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem noted Monday that his government is fighting a war against al-Qaida-linked militants who eat human hearts and dismember people while they are still alive, then send their limbs to family members.

Addressing world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Muallem also charged that the U.S., Britain and France had blocked the naming of the real perpetrators of chemical weapons attacks in Syria.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat lamented on Monday the poor state of affairs in the northern region of Akkar, saying that officials have neglected the impoverished area, whose suffering was highlighted in light of last week's sinking of an asylum-seekers' boat off the Indonesian coast.

He urged in his weekly editorial in the PSP-affiliated al-Anba website officials to “take immediate action that would send positive messages to the residents of Akkar.”

The death toll from the sinking of an Australia-bound asylum-seeker boat off Indonesia rose to 39 Monday, an official said, although it was not yet clear the number of Lebanese who died in the incident.

The boat, which was estimated to be carrying between 80 and 120 Middle Eastern asylum seekers, went down on Friday in rough seas off Indonesia's main island of Java. It was headed for Australia's Christmas Island.

Australia on Sunday insisted it provided "all appropriate assistance" to an asylum-seeker boat that sank off Indonesia, as the death toll rose to 28 people, the majority of them Lebanese.

The vessel, carrying an estimated 120 asylum-seekers from Lebanon, mainly from the town of Kabiit in Akkar, Jordan and Yemen, sank in rough seas Friday.

At least 60 Lebanese migrants drowned on Friday as they attempted to sail from Indonesia to Australia, reported Voice of Lebanon radio (93.3).

It said that no more than ten people survived the trip between the two countries and the corpses of the victims began to wash ashore on one of the Indonesian islands.

Jihadist fighters linked to al-Qaida set fire to statues and crosses inside churches in northern Syria Thursday and destroyed a cross atop the clock tower of one of them, a watchdog said.

Fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) entered the Greek Catholic Church of Our Lady of the Annunciation in the northern city of Raqa and torched the religious furnishings inside, the Syria Observatory for Human Rights said.

The United Nations gave a grim warning Wednesday that Lebanon faces an explosion of social tensions unless the international community helps to handle hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees.

President Michel Suleiman told foreign ministers from the world's leading nations that his country faces an "existential crisis" because of the influx fleeing the war between President Bashar Assad and opposition rebels.

President Michel Suleiman said Tuesday that Lebanon was struggling under the weight of at least a million Syrian refugees as the U.S. pledged tens of millions of dollars in aid to offset the costs of the war spillover.

Suleiman spoke of the crisis in his address to world leaders gathered at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Hours earlier, he met with President Barack Obama, who praised Lebanon for its generosity in welcoming refugees fleeing the crisis in neighboring Syria.

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun on Tuesday lashed out at Prime Minister-designate Tammam Salam, accusing him of “violating the constitution and the parliamentary tradition” and seeking to form a cabinet without consulting with the parliamentary blocs.

“It seems that the PM-designate is seeking to stir a clash with us, as if he has the right to form the cabinet without consulting with the parliamentary blocs. Let him form it with al-Nusra Front if he wants,” Aoun said after the weekly meeting of the Change and Reform bloc in Rabieh.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday called on states to stop sending weapons to the Syria conflict as the United States and Russia wrangled over destroying Syria's chemical weapons.

"I appeal to all states to stop fueling the bloodshed and to end the arms flows to all parties," Ban said as he opened the annual U.N. General Assembly.