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.

A deadly blast rocked south Damascus on Tuesday, state television reported, with a monitoring group putting the death toll from what it said was a car bombing at seven.

State television said in a breaking news alert that there had been dead and wounded in the "terrorist explosion" in the Tadamun neighborhood, without immediately giving any further details.

The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East urged on Tuesday the Syrian Red Crescent, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the governmental and non-governmental organizations NGOs to aid the ancient Syrian Christian village of Maaloula.

“Humanitarian organizations should send aid convoys to the historic Saint Takla convent and those who are trapped in it,” an appeal issued by the Patriarchate said.

Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Monday stressed that state authorities must be responsible for security across Lebanon, denying accusations that his party has received chemical weapons from Syria.

“The joint task force has taken over all the security checkpoints in Dahieh. We welcome this step and greatly appreciate this national decision taken by state officials," Nasrallah said in a televised speech.

The Phalange Party on Monday described the security plan that got underway in Beirut's southern suburbs as "an encouraging first step" to put an end to “all forms of autonomous security.”

“The Phalange Party sees in the security plan devised for Dahieh an encouraging first step to put an end to all forms of autonomous security across Lebanon, regardless of any concerns” that some parties might have over the move, the party said in a statement issued after the weekly meeting of its political bureau.

An Egyptian court on Monday banned the Muslim Brotherhood from operating and ordered its assets seized, in the latest blow to the Islamist movement of deposed president Mohammed Morsi.

The court also banned "any institution branching out from or belonging to the Brotherhood," the official MENA news agency reported, possibly restricting the movement's political arm the Freedom and Justice Party.