Iraqi Kurdish forces gave basic training to Syrian Kurds to fill any "security gap" should the Syrian regime fall, a top official in the party of the Kurdistan region's president said on Tuesday.

A "very small" number of young Syrian Kurds "were trained in basic training in camps in the region in order to fill any security gap after the fall of the Syrian regime," Hayman Hawrami, the head of the external relations department in the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), told Agence France Presse.

Several families of the 11 Lebanese pilgrims abducted in Syria held a sit-in on Tuesday near the junction that leads to the Baabda palace.

The families warned that they would escalate their measures if the men weren’t released soon and chanted slogans condemning the government’s failure to achieve their release.

Defense Minister Fayez Ghosn congratulated on Tuesday the army on the occasion of Army Day, hoping that this occasion would serve as an opportunity to place national interests above all else.

He therefore urged in a statement “politicians to realize the importance of the critical phase in Lebanon and the region and allow it to perform its duties and keep it away from petty disputes.”

Iran "will not allow the enemy to advance" in its key ally Syria, but does not yet see the need to directly intervene, the deputy chief of the Islamic republic's armed forces was quoted as saying in reports on Tuesday.

"There is still no need for Syria's circle of friends to fully enter the arena, and our assessment is that there will be no need to do so," Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri said, according to the Shargh daily.

Syrian troops and rebels poured into commercial capital Aleppo Tuesday as both sides battened down for the long haul after 40 police were killed on day four of a pivotal battle in the nearly 17-month conflict.

A Damascus security source said the offensive which the army launched on Saturday to recapture rebel-held areas of the city of some 2.7 million people now looked likely to drag on for "several weeks".

A convoy of unarmed U.N. observers came under attack in Syria, U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon said Monday as he expressed mounting concern at the spiraling onslaught by government forces.

The five-vehicle convoy which was carrying U.N. mission chief General Babacar Gaye came under small arms fire near the protest city of Homs, a U.N. peacekeeping spokeswoman said.

Abbas Shoaib, one of the 11 abducted Lebanese Shiite pilgrims in Syria, has managed to escape from his captors for a few hours before being recaptured, LBCI television reported on Monday.

“On Wednesday evening, one of the relatives of the hostages received an SMS from a Syrian mobile phone number in which the sender identified himself as Abbas Shoaib,” the TV network said.

The Phalange Party praised on Monday President Michel Suleiman’s efforts to resume the national dialogue.

It urged in a statement after its weekly politburo meeting “the removal of all obstacles hindering the talks, which requires an honest position on complying with the March 14 camp’s demands.”

Syria's top diplomat in London resigned Monday in protest against the "violent and oppressive" acts of President Bashar Assad's regime, the British Foreign Office said.

The move comes after a series of defections by senior Syrian officials in recent weeks, including diplomats in several countries and top army officers.

The new head of the U.N. observer mission in Syria said on Monday that he saw heavy shelling in the central city of Homs and major damage to the nearby town of Rastan during his first visit into the field.

"During my visit to Homs, I was personally able to witness heavy shelling from artillery and mortars ongoing in the neighborhoods of the city," Lieutenant General Babacar Gaye told reporters after Sunday's trip.