The number of Syrians seeking asylum in developed countries more than doubled last year from 2012 and was six times higher than at the start of its bloody civil war in 2011, the U.N. said on Friday.

Syrian asylum claims in 44 industrialized countries soared to 56,400 in 2013 from 25,200 such applications a year earlier and 8,500 in 2011, the U.N.'s refugee agency said in a report.

President Michel Suleiman lashed out at the resistance on Friday, saying that it transcended the power given to it when it decided to engage in battles in the neighboring country Syria.

“I am committed to my inauguration oath but when the resistance surpassed the authority given to it I had to be honest with the public and say what my responsibilities compel my as per my constitutional post,” Suleiman said in comments published in al-Joumhouria newspaper.

Some 600 Kurdish residents of villages in Syria's Raqa province have fled after an ultimatum from the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, an NGO said Thursday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 600 Kurds from the villages of Tal Akhdar, Tal Fandar and the town of Tal Abyad had abandoned their homes after warnings from ISIL.

An 82-truck convoy carrying vital supplies for Syrians in the north of the country has crossed the Turkish border for the first time since the start of the civil war there, the U.N. and a Turkish official said Thursday.

The convoy contains food supplies, blankets and mattresses, family kits, hygiene kits, medicines and medical supplies for "hundreds of thousands of people desperately in need in the north of Syria", said the United Nations' regional humanitarian coordinator Nigel Fisher.

Syria has surrendered more than half of its chemical weapons arsenal, the joint mission overseeing the dismantling of the banned stockpile said on Thursday.

"As of today 53.6 percent of the Syrian Arab Republic's chemical weapons material has been removed from or destroyed in the Syrian Arab Republic," the joint mission said.

Rights group Amnesty International has raised concern about the detention of a Syrian Red Crescent worker who has not been heard from since her arrest by authorities in January.

In a statement released late Wednesday, the group said Maryam Haid was arrested on January 13 by men believed to be members of the Syrian Criminal Security forces.

Two soldiers and a police officer were shot dead Thursday in southern Turkey when assailants carried out an attack that a top official said may be linked to events in Syria.

Using long-range rifles, they fired from a truck after being ordered to stop at a checkpoint on a highway in Ulukisla, a town near the border with Syria, according to local media.

Attacks killed eight people across Iraq Thursday, a day after bombings, shootings and shelling left 46 people dead, part of a surge in bloodshed with elections due within weeks.

The violence, Iraq's worst since 2008, has been primarily driven by discontent in the minority Sunni Arab community, which alleges mistreatment at the hands of the Shiite-led government and security forces, and by the civil war raging in neighboring Syria.

Syrian regime forces seized the famed Crusader fort Krak des Chevaliers on Thursday, marking a significant advance in their drive to seal the Lebanese border and sever rebel supply lines.

"The Syrian Arab Army raises the flag of the nation over the Krak des Chevaliers castle in Homs province, after crushing the terrorists who were holed up there," state television said.

UNIFIL Commander Major-General Paolo Serra said on Thursday that Hizbullah and Israel are not interested in escalating the situation after the Golan incident.

Israeli public radio quoted Paolo Serra, commander of U.N. peacekeeping troops in Lebanon, as saying Hizbullah too was unlikely to want a full-scale confrontation.