The Gulf Cooperation Council on Sunday called on the Lebanese parties not to drag their country “into the inferno of the Syrian crisis and its repercussions.”

During a meeting in the Saudi city of Jeddah, the foreign ministers of the six GCC states discussed “the latest developments in Lebanon and stressed the importance of preserving its security, stability and sovereignty,” according to the closing statement.

Egypt's president is too new in his post and doesn't fully understand Syrian politics, a Damascus official said Sunday, after Mohammed Morsi publicly sided with those opposed to President Bashar Assad.

"We heard the words of President Morsi. If I may say so, it was a disappointment," Syrian foreign ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi told Lebanon's NBN television.

The main opposition Syrian National Council has agreed to expand to include more groups opposing President Bashar Assad and will reform to be more representative, a spokesman told Agence France Presse on Sunday.

At a meeting in Stockholm late Saturday, the SNC agreed to expand its membership and to hold a vote later this month to elect its leadership, spokesman George Sabra said.

Twin bombs exploded near a tightly guarded government compound in the heart of Damascus on Sunday, state media said, as an army assault on a rural area of the central province of Hama killed at least 21 people, according to activists.

Four people were wounded in the twin bombings which struck in the Abu Remmaneh district where several security service buildings and the office of Vice President Farouq al-Sharaa are located, state television said.

A Turkish businessman kidnapped by al-Meqdad clan last month warned that his situation was “tragic” and appealed to his government to exert stronger efforts to release a Lebanese man abducted in Damascus so that he could go free.

In a short interview with An Nahar daily’s reporter from the place of his captivity, a frail-looking Tekin Tufan said: “I am tired and confused and trying to find out what’s happening around me.”

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle warned on Sunday that Lebanon was paying the price of the war in Syria and reiterated his country’s support for the Lebanese people.

In remarks to the Kuwaiti al-Rai daily, Westerwelle said: “We are watching the developments in Lebanon with concern and preserving our intense contacts with our Lebanese partners.”

"She was buried before I could even say goodbye to her, my poor, dear mother," says Manal who was shocked by footage of her mother's body at a Syrian massacre while watching television in Lebanon.

On the weekend of August 25 and 26, the bodies of more than 330 people were discovered in the town of Daraya, near Damascus, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Residents of this rebel rear base north of the key battleground of Aleppo were cleaning up on Saturday after a Syrian regime air strike killed at least 12 people.

"This was my house. Now nothing is left," said Yussef al-Wati, an engineer, as he clambered up a once enclosed stairway that is now open to the skies.

At least 117 people were killed in countrywide on Saturday as Syrian helicopter gunships deployed from a nearby airbase kept rebel fighters pinned down in the town of Taftanaz of Idlib province on the border with Turkey.

According to the Syrian Coordination Committees among the killed were women and children. 44 were reported in Damascus and its Suburbs, among them 4 discovered in Daraya and 6 in Jobar; 19 in Deir al-Zour; 15 in Homs; 14 in Aleppo; 10 in Idlib; 9 in Daraa, 1 in Damascus Suburbs; 5 in Hama; and 1 in Lattakia.

The U.N.'s new envoy to Syria said on Saturday that President Bashar Assad's regime should realize that the need for change was both "urgent" and "necessary" and that it must meet the "legitimate" demands of the Syrian people.

Lakhdar Brahimi's comments in an interview with al-Arabiya television came as Syrian warplanes and ground forces pounded the country's largest city, Aleppo, with bombs and mortar rounds while soldiers clashed with rebels in the narrow streets of its old quarter, according to activists.