Syrian army helicopter fire killed nine children in a camp for displaced civilians near the Jordanian border on Wednesday, a monitoring group said.

They were among 12 civilians killed in the air raid on the camp near the village of Shajara, south of Damascus, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Chemical weapons such as chlorine have been used in a "systematic manner" in Syria, according to an initial report by a team from the world's watchdog investigating alleged attacks there.

The report has not been publicly released, but the United States delegate to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) quoted from it at an OPCW meeting on Tuesday, according to a copy of the statement seen by Agence France Presse.

An army commando force raided on Wednesday Syrian refugees encampments in the northeastern border town of Arsal, the state-run National News Agency reported.

NNA said that the army also carried out patrols on the outskirts of Arsal in search for gunmen and wanted suspects.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham has said the U.S. must spend money to help Lebanon confront the Syrian refugee crisis as the U.S. Senate appropriators advanced a $48.3 billion budget for foreign aid and State Department work.

The Appropriations foreign operations subcommittee adopted the budget by consensus Tuesday. The full committee examines it Thursday.

Iraqi Shiite volunteers, who had been fighting in neighboring Syria, have been heading home to battle an offensive that has brought militants to near Baghdad, a monitoring group said Tuesday.

Thousands of Iraqi Shiites had flocked to Syria to fight alongside President Bashar Assad's forces against mainly Sunni rebels.

Fighting erupted at the northern approaches to Baghdad Tuesday as militants seized most of a key Shiite majority town in northern Iraq and parts of the central city of Baquba.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki dismissed several senior security force commanders in the face of the week-old militant offensive that has overrun swathes of the country.

New clashes erupted in eastern Syria between rebels seeking President Bashar Assad's ouster and a jihadist group that has captured swathes of territory in neighboring Iraq, a monitor said Tuesday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Monday night's fighting broke out when the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant "tried to push an advance" in the village of Basira, located in the east of Deir Ezzor province close to Iraq.

The kidnapping in Iraq of dozens of Turks by extremist fighters has revived debate over Ankara's alleged courtship of jihadist groups and prompted calls for an overhaul in its approach to the war in Syria. 

The abduction in Mosul last week of 49 Turkish diplomats, guards and children, as well as 31 truck drivers by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), drew a fierce rebuke from Turkey's government and the opposition, which accused Ankara of siding with extremists fighting in Syria and Iraq. 

Social Affairs Minister Rashid Derbas has said that he discussed with Kuwait's Speaker Marzouq al-Ghanim the possibility of holding an Arab parliamentary conference in Beirut over the Syrian refugee crisis.

Derbas told al-Liwaa newspaper in remarks published on Tuesday that such a conference could be followed by an Arab summit to help the host countries meet the burden of the refugees.

Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has said that jihadists of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) would have reached Beirut had his party not sent its fighters to Syria.

“Had we not interfered in Syria at the appropriate moment, ISIL would have been in Beirut now,” he told the leaders of al-Mahdi Scouts Association during a meeting on Sunday.