The United States said Thursday it opposed a role by Syria in resolving Iraq's turmoil after President Bashar Assad's government was said to have carried out air strikes against militants.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, facing Sunni extremists who have swept across his country from war-torn Syria, told the BBC that Assad's air force this week struck the insurgents on the Syrian side of the border, in a marked escalation.

Jihadists from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant bolstered their presence Thursday in the Syrian town of Albu Kamal on the border with Iraq, a monitoring group said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the move came a day after members in the town of al-Qaida's franchise in Syria, Al-Nusra Front, pledged loyalty to ISIL, giving it control over both sides of the frontier.

The Internal Security Forces Intelligence Bureau raided on Thursday hotels near Duroy Hotel a day after a suicide bomber blew himself up at his room while his accomplice survived the blast.

According to media reports, the Intelligence Bureau raided Ramada Plaza, previously known as As Safir Heliopolitan Hotel, which is across the Duroy Hotel, in search for suspects.

A blistering jihadist offensive has sparked debate on the Middle East's colonial-era borders being redrawn, but experts say this is unlikely as Arabs have grown accustomed to their nation states.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant posted pictures online this month of militants bulldozing a berm dividing Iraq and Syria, symbolizing its goal of uniting its forces in the two countries.

The Syrian air force carried out air strikes targeting militants on the Syrian side of the Iraq-Syria border this week, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told the BBC on Thursday.

Maliki told the British broadcaster he "welcomed" any such strike against militants, led by the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, but noted Baghdad did not request the aerial raids which took place on Tuesday.

The deteriorating security situation in Lebanon is expected to impose itself on a cabinet session that was held on Thursday after three suicide bombings rocked areas across the country in less than a week.

The cabinet is set to discuss a mechanism on the government's functions in the absence of a president.

The General Security Directorate reportedly began monitoring the terrorist group that was busted in Duroy Hotel in Beirut's Raouche area a week before raiding it.

According to As Safir newspaper published on Thursday, the General Security investigations proved the group had links to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas said in a letter to Bashar Assad that his election as Syrian president will help to end the country's three-year war, Damascus said on Wednesday.

"Your election to the presidency of the Syrian Arab Republic guarantees Syria's unity and sovereignty, and starts of a countdown to the end of Syria's crisis and its war against terrorism," Abbas wrote, according to the Syrian presidency's Facebook page.

Moroccan police have busted a "terrorist" cell recruiting and sending volunteers to fight alongside Islamists in Syria and Iraq, arresting six people, the interior ministry said on Wednesday.

Among those arrested in the operation, carried out in the city of Fez in coordination with the domestic intelligence agency (DGST), was a Moroccan Islamist formerly held under the country's anti-terrorist law, according to the ministry statement.

The army intelligence detained the members of a terrorist network, who are suspected of planning to assassinate a high-ranking security official in the North, the military said in a communique issued on Wednesday.

According to the statement, the army intelligence apprehended a terrorist cell in the Lebanese Qalamoun region.