International peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi is to head to Damascus on Thursday to meet Syria's President Bashar Assad, an Arab diplomat in Cairo said, as fresh bloodshed gripped the north of the country.

In a single incident, rebels killed at least 18 soldiers in a car bomb and ground attack on a military position in Idlib province of northwest Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Prime Minister Najib Miqati will preside an official Lebanese delegation to New York at the end of September to participate in the annual United Nations General Assembly's meeting, An Nahar newspaper reported on Wednesday.

According to the daily, the premier's speech will highlight the importance of implementing peace in the Middle East and Lebanon's ambition to witness its accomplishment.

U.S. Treasury Deputy Secretary Neal Wolin stressed that his country isn't targeting the Lebanese banking sector rather than it's calling on it to be aware of the risks of dealing with Iran and Syria.

An Nahar daily said Wednesday he pointed out that Lebanon should be keen not to allow Iran and Syria to exploit its banks to evade the sanctions imposed on it.

Interior Minister Marwan Charbel revealed on Wednesday that there was a "positive development" in the cases of Lebanese kidnapped in Syria following talks with Turkey's intelligence chief and his aide.

Charbel made the revelation from the Grand Serail following his return to Beirut less than 24 hours after accompanying freed Turkish businessman Tekin Tufan to Turkey with General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim and Turkish Ambassador Inan Ozyildiz.

France has helped a number of Syrian military figures to desert from President Bashar Assad's embattled regime, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Tuesday.

"We have contributed to a certain number of desertion operations," he told a parliamentary commission, without giving any further details.

U.S. Treasury Deputy Secretary Neal Wolin warned on Tuesday of attempts to exploit the Lebanese financial sector to evade sanctions on Iran and Syria, said the U.S. Embassy in a statement.

He said “further underscored the need for Lebanon to prevent abuse of the Lebanese financial sector by illicit actors and for Lebanese banks and regulatory authorities to remain vigilant against the evasion of sanctions by Iran and Syria.”

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday that the new U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi will meet Syrian President Bashar Assad when he travels to the conflict-ravaged country.

"Special representative Brahimi is soon going to have a meeting with Syrian authorities including president Assad, and he has already been engaged with the key stakeholders," Ban told a news conference in Bern, without providing more details about the highly anticipated visit.

Pope Benedict XVI will not intervene politically in the Syrian crisis during his visit to the Middle East this week or tell Catholics where their alliances should lie, the Vatican said Tuesday.

"The pope will not present himself as a powerful political leader" or make "big speeches of a political nature" when he travels to Lebanon on Friday for a three-day trip, Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said at a press conference.

A tiny village in northern Lebanon, perched on a hill overlooking Syria, Minjez is a bucolic and peaceful place by day but terrorized at night by shelling from across the border.

"We can't sleep a wink," laments Marcele Shahine, a 37-year-old mother of four. "The other night a rocket hit a house, but happily no one was there."

The number of refugees who have fled Syria has reached more than 250,000, the United Nations said Tuesday, calling the humanitarian problems sparked by the conflict "our biggest crisis".

"Latest figures show that more than a quarter of a million Syrian refugees (253,106 people) have now been registered in the surrounding region, or are awaiting registration," U.N. Refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards said.