Hundreds of Kurdish fighters have entered northern Syria to help battle jihadists besieging the Kurdish city of Ain al-Arab, a monitor said Tuesday.

"At least 800 Kurdish fighters crossed the Turkish-Syrian border to help their comrades in Ain al-Arab (Kobane in Kurdish), which is under total siege by Islamic State jihadists," Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman told Agence France Presse.

Israeli warplanes struck three administrative and military targets in Syria's Golan at dawn on Tuesday, killing two security guards and two women, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

"Israeli planes flying over the occupied Golan Heights launched rockets into southern Syria's Quneitra province at around 1:15 am (2215 GMT). Rockets hit Base 90 -- a Syrian military airbase -- and regime bastion Baath City. Four people were killed," the monitor said.

In Syria's second city Aleppo, craters blasted by regime air raids on opposition-held areas have been transformed into improvised swimming pools for children to cool off in raging summer temperatures.

Although the water is filthy, the war-weary children of the country's one-time commercial capital find in these pools a rare opportunity to both have fun and seek relief from the oppressive heat.

President Bashar Assad begins a new seven-year term Wednesday looking to play up a string of battlefield victories while trying to win over war-weary Syrians and those fearful of jihadists.

His swearing-in after a controversial June election -- held in government-controlled areas only in the midst of a raging civil war -- comes with Western policy in disarray after Sunni militants captured a vast swathe of neighboring Iraq, as well as a big chunk of eastern Syria.

British Prime Minister David Cameron named euroskeptic Philip Hammond as his new foreign secretary on Tuesday in a major cabinet reshuffle ahead of next year's general election.

Former defense secretary Hammond, who replaces William Hague, supports Britain leaving the European Union unless significant powers are returned to London before a referendum promised for 2017.

Radical cleric Abu Qatada, who is being tried on terror charges in Jordan, on Tuesday denounced as "void" the declaration of a caliphate by Sunni jihadists in Iraq and Syria.

"The announcement of a caliphate by the Islamic State (IS) is void and meaningless because it was not approved by jihadists in other parts of the world," Abu Qatada wrote in a 21-page document published on jihadist websites.

President Bashar Assad on his inauguration on Thursday is expected to play the role of "victor" while trying to win over war-weary Syrians and those fearful of jihadist advances.

Analysts say Assad, who was swept back to power in a June 3 election slammed as a "farce" by the opposition, will also try to convince the West his regime is a bulwark against the extremist Islamic State (IS) which is sowing terror in Syria and Iraq.

Turkey is seeking to host a conference for Muslim scholars in Istanbul during the upcoming days to reject extremism and violence and to safeguard Islam against the so-called "caliphate" that was declared by Sunni militants in Iraq and Syria.

A Turkish envoy held talks with several Muslim scholars and clerics in Beirut to invite them to attend a conference in Istanbul between July 17 and 19, As Safir newspaper reported on Tuesday.

The U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution Monday authorizing humanitarian convoys to Syria without the consent of the Damascus regime, to help more than one million civilians in rebel-held areas.

The council -- including Russia and China, who have vetoed four Western-backed draft resolutions on Syria since the start of the conflict in 2011 -- unanimously approved the measure.

Hizbullah has taken into captivity 14 Syrian rebels as the death toll from its clashes with armed groups on the Lebanese-Syrian border has risen to 16, a monitoring group said Monday.

In the evening, LBCI television said “clashes with heavy- and medium-caliber weapons have renewed in the Eastern Mountain Belt amid Syrian air raids targeting the gunmen.”