Arab foreign ministers held a meeting in Saudi Arabia on Sunday to discuss the Syrian conflict and the rise of "extremism" in the region, the official SPA news agency reported.

The meeting came as U.S. media reported that Washington, which has launched air raids in northern Iraq against Islamic State, could consider similar action against IS jihadists in Syria. 

Britain's Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said Sunday that the killing of U.S. journalist James Foley by a man speaking with an English accent was an "utter betrayal of our country".

A 27-year-old German kidnapped in Syria by militants from the Islamic State around a year ago has been released, according to the Sunday newspaper Welt am Sonntag.

Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq revealed on Sunday that the state will establish lines dedicated for Syrian nationals along land border crossings and at the airport to fix their legal status, if they intend to depart Lebanon.

“The lines will be established on all legal border crossings, at Beirut International Airport and near the (northeastern) town of Arsal,” Mashnouq said in comments published in al-Mustaqbal newspaper.

Rocket fire from Syria slammed into the Israeli-occupied sector of the Golan Heights Sunday but there were no reports of casualties.

Young Syrians are gravitating towards the radical Islamic State due to a lack of prospects and the lure of financial support more than "ideological conviction", the pope's Syria envoy said Saturday.

IS militants, which have been active in the Syrian conflict for several years, have made headlines in recent months after grabbing large swathes of northern Iraq and declaring a caliphate spanning the territory they hold in both countries.

Saudi Arabia is to host a meeting of foreign ministers from several Arab states to discuss the Syrian conflict and the rise of Islamic State jihadists, Egypt's foreign ministry announced Saturday.

It said Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia were to take part in Sunday's talks.

At least 24 jihadists have been killed and 150 wounded in clashes with Syrian troops defending an air base in Raqa province, a monitoring group said on Saturday.

The clashes came as the Islamic State group launched a new bid to capture the Tabqa base, the government's last bastion in the northern province, the rest of which is in the hands of the jihadists.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea accused some political powers of intimidating Christians in Lebanon with the threat of Islamist movements in the region, reported the pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat on Saturday.

He told the daily: “The LF has been seeking in recent weeks to reassure the people of the contrary. The developments in Syria and Iraq cannot be replicated in Lebanon for several reasons.”

"What do you want to be? A jihadist, or to execute a martyrdom operation?"

In the "caliphate" recently proclaimed by jihadists in Syria and Iraq, even young children are indoctrinated, and Sharia law is backed by the gun, according to a gripping documentary offering one of the first glimpses of life in Raqqa, power base of the so-called Islamic State (IS).