Syria has reached a "critical moment" as the world awaits news of fresh peace talks, China's foreign minister told the warring nation's opposition leader Ahmad Jarba in Beijing Wednesday.

Wang Yi was speaking at the start of four days of talks with a delegation led by the head of the Syrian National Coalition, as Beijing attempts to portray a neutral stance in the three-year conflict.

State Commissioner to the Military Court Judge Saqr Saqr charged on Wednesday Syrian national Mohammed Abdul Hamid Qassem with belonging to a terrorist organization.

State-run National News Agency reported that Qassem and several others were charged with belonging to the Syrian al-Nusra Front, an al-Qaida-linked rebel movement, carrying out terrorist attacks, the possession of arms, and booby-trapping vehicles.

Syrian rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad for the first time received at least 20 U.S.-made TOW anti-tank missiles from a "Western source," a rebel official told Agence France Presse Tuesday.

"Moderate, well-organized fighters from the Hazm movement have for the first time received more than 20 TOW anti-tank missiles from a Western source," the source said on condition of anonymity, and without specifying who had supplied the rockets.

The northern Bekaa town of Shaath, al-Manar TV and Hizbullah bid farewell Tuesday to slain reporter Hamza al-Hajj Hassan, in an emotional funeral that was attended by thousands of mourners.

The reporter's coffin, draped in a yellow Hizbullah flag, moved slowly from the Dar al-Hikma Hospital in Baalbek to the cemetery of the town. Some mourners fired their machineguns in the air, despite calls to the contrary from organizers and the journalist's uncle.

Some 400 men, including rebels and draft evaders from besieged areas of Syria's city of Homs, who recently surrendered to the authorities, fear they may be held indefinitely, activists said Tuesday.

Evacuations from the battered districts began in February, during a U.N.-supervised humanitarian operation that saw some 1,400 people leave the blockaded rebel areas.

Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region is digging a trench along its border with Syria to prevent the infiltration of militants and smuggling from the war-racked country, officials say.

"The trench is designed to prevent the infiltration of members of terrorist groups and stop smugglers," Halkurd Mullah Ali, the spokesman for the Kurdish region's peshmerga security ministry, told Agence France Presse.

The U.N.'s refugee agency said Tuesday it was partially lifting a call to stop returning asylum seekers to Bulgaria because conditions there had improved.

Under current rules, European countries must return asylum seekers to the first country on the continent they arrive in.

Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq said Tuesday that Syrian refugees are “our guests and our people,” but noted that the government “does not have the assets or infrastructure to cope with these numbers.”

“Syrian refugees represent 27% of Lebanon's population, while in Jordan they number 10% of the population and in Turkey 4%,” Mashnouq said during a meeting with the representatives of several municipalities, lamenting the fact that Amman and Ankara are receiving greater international aid.

Syrian army troops backed by pro-regime militiamen entered rebel-held neighborhoods of the central city of Homs on Tuesday after laying siege to the districts for nearly two years.

The assault follows a U.N. operation earlier this year that saw some 1,400 people trapped inside the besieged neighborhoods evacuated, though around 1,300 people, mostly fighters, remained behind.

Saudi Arabia Tuesday urged "stern" world action against Syria after the regime's decision to hold presidential elections and its alleged use of toxic gas against civilians.

Saudi Arabia is one of the main backers of the uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad in a civil war increasingly seen as a proxy battle between it and regional rival Iran.