Leading Republican Senator John McCain said on Saturday night that Washington could be doing more to back the "effort" of the Syrian people in ending the regime of President Bashar Assad.

Speaking at the beginning of a meeting with Israeli President Shimon Peres, McCain recalled his visit to a refugee camp in Jordan earlier that day, "to see the suffering of the Syrian people up close".

Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi stated on Saturday that the repercussions of Syria's conflict on Lebanon are “alarming”.

“The ongoing war in Syria has had tremendous consequences on its neighboring countries, particularly on Lebanon,” al-Arabi told MTV.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees announced on Saturday that the number of Syrians and Palestinians who have fled the neighboring war-torn country and came to Lebanon has exceeded 212,000.

“These 212,000 refugees are currently receiving aid from the Lebanese government, the United Nations and non-governmental organizations,” a statement released by the U.N. said.

Just a few months ago, Ali Naema was playing in the Syrian army band.

Today, he's making war, not music -- but with the rebels, having swapped sides and his trumpet for an AK-47 assault rifle to join the fight against his former comrades with the aim of toppling President Bashar Assad.

The Ras al-Ain branch of the Kurdish National Council in Syria called on the Syrian opposition on Saturday to intervene over an ongoing jihadist assault on the northern city located on the Turkish border.

"Since Wednesday morning, some armed groups have launched an offensive against innocent and unarmed civilians in Ras al-Ain using various types of heavy weapons and sowing fear and panic among children and women," a statement said.

Syria's foreign ministry on Saturday decried a petition by 58 countries calling for a war crimes case against Damascus, in a letter to the president of the United Nations Security Council.

"The Syrian government regrets the persistence of these countries in following the wrong approach and refusing to recognize the duty of the Syrian state to protect its people from terrorism imposed from abroad," it said.

The United Nations Fund for Children (UNICEF) on Saturday denounced violence over the past week in Syria in which dozens of children were killed.

"A series of reports from Syria this week underlines the terrible price children are paying" in a conflict that has ravaged the country for 22 months and left more than 60,000 people dead, according to U.N. figures.

Egypt's government unlawfully expelled two Syrian refugees back to the war-ravaged country last week, and two Palestinians from Syria now risk being deported, the watchdog Human Rights Watch said on Saturday.

A Palestinian man and his son currently being held at Cairo airport were apparently refused entry to Egypt and would face "indiscriminate violence and possible persecution if returned to Syria," the New York-based group said.

U.N. rights chief Navi Pillay made a new demand Friday for the divided Security Council to order an International Criminal Court war crimes investigation in Syria.

Her call added to a petition by 58 countries calling for a war crimes case over the 22-month-old conflict in which the United Nations says more than 60,000 people have been killed, mostly by President Bashar Assad's forces.

A sniper killed an Al-Jazeera reporter in southern Syria on Friday, the pan-Arab television network said, in the second such shooting of a journalist in two days in the conflict-swept country.

The killings take the death toll of reporters who have died in Syria's 22-month conflict to at least 20, according to a count by Agence France Presse and Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, or RSF.