Twenty Syrian soldiers were killed on Saturday and 53 wounded in clashes with presumed army deserters, activists said.

"Twenty soldiers perished on Saturday and 53 were wounded in clashes between the regular army and presumed deserters in the Baba Amro district of Homs," said a statement from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights received in Nicosia.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged Syria to "immediately" end attacks on civilians Saturday, a day after President Bashar Assad launched a fierce crackdown that killed over 50 people.

Ban "appeals for military operations against civilians to stop at once," said his spokesman Martin Nesirky.

Clashes between Syrian troops and suspected deserters reportedly killed 17 soldiers, a rights group said Saturday, as Arab foreign ministers condemned the murder of dozens of civilians during anti-regime protests.

The latest civilian bloodletting came on Friday as worshippers emerging from weekly Muslim prayers swarmed streets in the central protest hub of Homs and other towns urging a Libya-style no-fly zone to protect civilians and encourage army deserters.

Lithuania said Friday that it had barred Syrian planes from crossing its airspace on their way to Russia's Kaliningrad territory amid concerns that they could transport military cargo.

A Lithuanian defense ministry spokesperson told Agence France Presse that it acted in line with European Union sanctions, which were imposed in May due to a crackdown by the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

A senior Lebanese security source told the BBC on Friday that members of Hizbullah had allegedly “kidnapped three Syrian nationals” in Beirut overnight Thursday.

“The abducted Syrians are the two brothers Yassine and Mustafa al-Sahn and Issa Saleh, who were kidnapped from their residence place in the Bir Hassan area in the Lebanese capital Beirut and taken to an unknown destination,” the BBC’s correspondent in Beirut quoted the source as saying.

At least 37 people were killed Friday as Syrian security forces opened fire, encircled mosques and carried out arrests in a bid to break up anti-regime protesters who are now calling for a no-fly zone in Syria to protect civilians and soldiers deserting the army, the Syrian Revolution General Commission said.

"Eight civilians were killed in various neighborhoods of Hama, 11 others in the city of Homs and one civilian was killed in Qusayr, in the region of Homs," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said earlier on Friday in a statement.

Syria slammed United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s recent report on the implementation of U.N. Security Council resolution 1559, saying that it has not meddled in Lebanese affairs or infiltrated Lebanese territory, reported the daily An Nahar on Friday.

Syria’s permanent ambassador to the U.N. Bashar al-Jaafari informed Ban in a letter: “The majority of the information on Syria mentioned in the report is based on misleading and fabricated media sources.”

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem on Thursday held talks with China's special envoy for the Middle East who reaffirmed his country's opposition to foreign interference in Syria, the official Syrian news agency SANA said.

Muallem and envoy Wu Sike met in Damascus for talks during which they spoke of "the relations of solid friendship" between their countries.

Five Arab Spring activists have won the European parliament's Sakharov prize awarded to campaigners for freedom, a parliamentary source said Thursday.

The laureates are Mohamed Bouazizi of Tunisia, awarded posthumously, Egyptian militant Asmaa Mahfouz, Libyan dissident Ahmed al-Zubair Ahmed al-Sanusi, Syrian lawyer Razan Zeitouneh and Syrian cartoonist Ali Farzat, the source added.

The March 14-led opposition stressed the need to resume dialogue in Lebanon but among members of the “new parliamentary majority camp,” al-Mustaqbal newspaper reported on Thursday.

March 14 leadership sources told the daily in comments on Speaker Nabih Berri’s call for all-party talks, that “the dialogue is a vital necessity, but among the new majority camp… amid the disputes that proved they are incapable of resolving even the smallest issues.”