The Netherlands has closed its embassy in Damascus because of the worsening security situation in Syria and to send a political sign to its leadership, the foreign ministry announced Wednesday.

"The shutdown is an expression of the revulsion we feel in the face of the appalling violence of the Syrian government," Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal said in a statement.

The U.S. State Department has hailed the efforts exerted by March 14 opposition political leaders to maintain security and expressed support for a new era in Lebanese-Syrian relations.

“We support Lebanon’s political leaders’ efforts to maintain security and to prepare for the day when a democratic government in Damascus will usher in a new era in Lebanese-Syrian relations,” said the State Department on the occasion of the anniversary of the 2005 Cedar Revolution.

Saudi Arabia has shut down its embassy in Syria and has withdrawn all its staff, the foreign ministry announced Wednesday in a statement carried by state news agency SPA.

"Due the developments in Syria, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has shut down its embassy in Damascus and withdrawn all its diplomats and staff there," said the statement.

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun on Wednesday warned that the violence in Syria would spill over to Lebanon if the embattled Syrian regime was ousted, rejecting the presence of what he called “Takfiris on our border.”

“Those who backed Israel’s war on Lebanon in 2006 are the same ones who are backing the inner war against Syria, that’s why we should think of good neighborliness and the neighborhood’s security, as we cannot live with Takfiri groups on our border that are interacting with the Lebanese domestic scene,” Aoun said on the 23rd anniversary of the so-called Liberation War he waged in 1989 against Syrian forces stationed in Lebanon.

The world community must document the atrocities being carried out by the government of Syria against its people to ensure justice is done, British Prime Minister David Cameron said Wednesday.

"We must document the evidence so that those guilty of crimes may be held responsible, whatever it takes," Cameron, who held talks at the White House with President Barack Obama, told reporters at a joint press conference.

China's Syria envoy Zhang Ming was to hold meetings Wednesday and Thursday in Paris, the French foreign ministry said, but he was not due to meet top-level officials.

Western nations including France have been at loggerheads with China and Russia over the unrest in Syria, with the two powers blocking United Nations Security Council resolutions on the crisis.

Four men move deftly and carefully across a field, their silhouettes outlined by the light of a full moon, bearing a stretcher.

Five lives are at stake as they hasten to carry to safety in nearby Turkey a man shot during a demonstration in the Syrian city of Hama against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan on Wednesday pressed President Bashar al-Assad to quickly answer proposals to end Syria's strife ahead of a new diplomatic surge aimed at passing a Security Council resolution on the crisis.

Annan, who on Friday will brief the U.N. Security Council on his mission, announced that he has received one response from Assad's government.

France has sent its senior human rights envoy to countries bordering Syria to collect evidence to level against the regime in the International Criminal Court, diplomats said Wednesday.

Ambassador Francois Zimeray is "in the region" to collect testimony from Syrian refugees and witnesses to the fighting in order that France can lodge a complaint with the court against Bashar al-Assad's regime, they said.

Two Turkish journalists from an Istanbul-based newspaper have disappeared in neighboring Syria, the paper said Wednesday, asking Damascus and Ankara for help to find them.

The newspaper Milat said in a brief statement that it had not had contact with journalist Adem Ozkose and cameraman Hamit Coskun for five days.