U.S. journalist Richard Engel, who was freed after being held hostage for five days in Syria, said Tuesday that his captors were taking him to an alleged Hizbullah stronghold when he was set free by rebels.

"This was a group known as the shabiha. This is a government militia. They are loyal to President (Bashar) Assad," Engel said about his captors.

Lebanese lawyer Rashad Salameh filed on Tuesday a lawsuit against al-Mustaqbal movement lawmaker Oqab Saqr for allegedly sending arms to Syrian rebels.

The lawyer agreed last week to file the lawsuit at the behest of Syrian authorities against several people allegedly involved in arming the Syrian opposition.

In a Turkish town across the border from Syria, a few dozen exiled schoolteachers have established a makeshift school for children displaced by their native country's brutal civil war.

The school, on the ground floor of a three-story building in southwest Kilis, lacks all but the the most basic of supplies while all the teachers work for no pay in cramped classrooms where five children often squeeze into desks made for three.

Russia is sending a new flotilla of warships to the Mediterranean, the defense ministry said on Tuesday, amid the escalating situation in Syria.

The frigate Yaroslavl Mudry, the landing ships Kaliningrad and Alexander Shabalin as well as two other vessels have left their home port of Baltiysk on the Baltic and are heading for the Mediterranean, the defense ministry said in a statement quoted by Russian news agencies.

Syrian rebels made advances Tuesday in a fierce battle for control of a Palestinian camp in Damascus that forced refugees to flee after an army ultimatum for them to leave, residents and a watchdog said.

Forces loyal to President Bashar Assad meanwhile carried out air strikes on the Eastern Ghuta region stretching along the east of the capital as well as its southern outskirts, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Russia said Tuesday that two of its nationals along with an Italian steel worker had been abducted in Syria on a motorway from the port city of Tartus.

"By all appearances, they are Russians," Russian news agencies quoted Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying on a visit to the Central Asia state of Uzbekistan.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat said on Tuesday that the large number of Syrian and Palestinian refugees entering Lebanon from the neighboring country became a burden on the state, urging the government to double its efforts to confront the humanitarian crisis.

According to As Safir newspaper, Jumblat called during talks with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius in Paris on Monday on the competent international agencies to cooperate to aid Lebanon in this matter.

The Lebanese opposition is planning to recognize Syria's National Coalition by the end of the year to set the stage for ties with “the future regime of Syria,” March 14 general-secretariat coordinator Fares Soaid and An Nahar daily said on Tuesday.

Soaid told An Nahar that it was necessary to reach understandings on the common border, mutual interests and previous agreements with the next regime in Syria.

Syrian Prime Minister Wael al-Halaqi on Monday toured battle-scarred Aleppo for the first time since the outbreak of fighting in the northern city in July, state television said.

"The prime minister went to Aleppo at the head of a delegation to assess the hardships faced by the city due to the criminal actions of terrorist gangs," the broadcaster said.

Austria's foreign ministry said Monday it had demanded an explanation from Syria over the arrest of an Austrian citizen who according to a humanitarian group had been distributing aid in the conflict-torn country.

Jamal Orabi, a 47-year-old Syrian with Austrian nationality, was arrested by Syrian military intelligence while at the home of relatives on Sunday in Aleppo, his family said Monday.