The rebel Free Syrian Army announced on Wednesday that it will not mediate anymore for the release of the Lebanese pilgrims kidnapped in Syria's Aazaz.

The FSA's Political and Media Coordinator Louay Meqdad told Future TV: “After a meeting of the army's commanders, we have decided to end our negotiations to release the abducted”.

Syrian forces on Wednesday "killed and wounded members of a terrorist group who attempted to infiltrate from Lebanese territory via the Joussiyeh border crossing in Qusayr's countryside" in Homs, Syria's state news agency SANA quoted a local source as saying.

"The group opened fire on border guards and security checkpoints in Joussiyeh's farms, before our armed forces confronted it and left most of its members dead or wounded while the others retreated to Lebanese territory," the source said.

The United Nations on Wednesday predicted the number of Syrian refugees in neighboring countries will double to 1.1 million by June next year if the country's war is not ended.

There are now more than 540,000 registered refugees in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Egypt, according to the latest U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) report on Syria.

More than 1,000 Syrians crossed into Turkey in the last 24 hours after the Syrian regime attacked a bakery in the town of Halfeya, a Turkish foreign ministry official said on Wednesday.

"1,100 Syrians mostly women and children fled to Turkey in the last 24 hours through a border crossing in the town of Reyhanli," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Syria peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi will hold talks in Moscow on Saturday following consultations with President Bashar Assad's regime in Damascus, Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov told ITAR-TASS on Wednesday.

The Russian foreign ministry said Brahimi himself had requested the meeting as he pursues what so far have been fruitless efforts to negotiate an end to 21 months of violence that have claimed more than 45,000 lives.

Turkey will provide neighboring Syria with electricity if asked but the deteriorating situation there makes such a move unlikely, the energy minister said on Wednesday.

"We'll give electricity to Syria if they want," Taner Yildiz was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency.

A Syrian military police chief who defected from the regime of President Bashar Assad is in Turkey, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported on Wednesday.

General Abdel Aziz Jassem al-Shallal, commander of the Syrian military police, crossed into Turkey on Wednesday via the Cilvegozu border crossing in the town of Reyhanli, Anatolia said.

Syrian Interior Minister Mohammed al-Shaar on Wednesday left for Damascus via the Beirut Rafik Hariri International Airport aboard a private jet, after spending one week at the American University of Beirut Medical Center for treatment of wounds he sustained in a suicide bomb attack on the interior ministry, Lebanon's National News Agency reported.

“Shaar left hospital on Wednesday afternoon,” Turkey's state-run Anatolia news agency quoted medical sources at AUBMC as saying.

The Syrian deputy foreign minister, Faisal Muqdad, was headed for Moscow, an airport source in Beirut told AFP on Wednesday, amid reports of a U.S.-Russian initiative for a transition in Syria.

"Accompanied by foreign ministry official Ahmed Arnus, Muqdad's Aeroflot flight to Moscow took off from Beirut airport at midnight (2200 GMT)" Tuesday, the airport source said, on condition of anonymity.

A gang has been recently stealing pickup trucks and selling them to Syrian opposition members, media reports said on Wednesday.

A security source told Voice of Lebanon radio (93.3) that police stations in the neighborhoods of Ain el-Rummaneh and Shiyyah in Beirut's southern suburbs opened an investigation into the thefts.