French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius condemned Sunday's air strikes on Palestinian refugee camps in Syria and said the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad was nearing its end.

"It's a scandalous attack," the foreign minister told French television, accusing Assad wanting to "inflame the situation".

Syrian Vice President Farouq al-Sharaa said in an interview to be published on Monday that neither his government nor the rebels fighting to overthrow it are capable of a decisive victory.

"No opposition can end the battle militarily, just as the security forces and army cannot achieve a decisive conclusion," Sharaa told the Lebanese daily al-Akhbar.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas appealed on Sunday for an immediate halt to firing on Palestinian refugee camps in Syria, after air strikes on the Yarmuk camp in Damascus killed at least eight civilians.

The Islamist Hamas movement also condemned the attacks, calling them a "crime."

Warplanes bombed a Palestinian refugee camp in south Damascus on Sunday for the first time in Syria's 21-month uprising, as the army escalated its efforts to suppress the rebellion in the capital.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the air strike killed at least eight civilians at Yarmuk camp, which has been hit by intermittent violence during the past few months.

The kidnapper of Lebanese pilgrims in Syria said he will not release the men unless the Syrian government sets free two prominent opposition figures and Lebanon frees all Syrian activists in government custody.

Amar al-Dadikhi of the North Storm brigade, also known as Abu Ibrahim, claims to have 1,300 armed fighters and a network of cross-border contacts, said the New York Times.

Syrian authorities handed over to Lebanon on Sunday the bodies of four fighters killed in an ambush by regime troops in the town of Tall Kalakh in the second round of such transfer.

The bodies, which were transferred in four ambulances from the Arida border crossing in northern Lebanon, were identified to be as that of three Lebanese - Mohammed al-Ayyoubi, Ahmed Nabhan, Bilal al-Ghoul - and Palestinian Mohammed al-Hajj.

EU and U.N. aid chiefs called in Beirut on Saturday for urgent funds to help internally displaced and refugee Syrians, in a new phase of a "brutal conflict" that has killed tens of thousands and affected hundreds of thousands more.

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres told reporters during a visit to Beirut that "this is not a conflict like many others. This indeed became a brutal conflict in the context of dramatic humanitarian tragedy."

A top rebel commander in the northern Syrian province of Aleppo was killed in a major battle for a military academy on Saturday, his brigade said.

"It is with pride that Liwa al-Tawhid (brigade) announces the death in combat of the hero martyr, Colonel Yusef al-Jader (Abu Furat)," the brigade said on its Facebook page.

Syrian Ambassador to Lebanon Ali Abdul Karim Ali informed Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour that his country will hand over on Sunday the bodies of four Lebanese fighters who were recently killed in the Syrian town of Tall Kalakh, the state-run National News Agency reported.

“The competent Lebanese authorities will be handed over on Sunday noon the corpses of four men who were killed in Tall Kalakh,” Ali said on Saturday.

Western sanctions on Syria are causing the population to suffer, Foreign Minister Walid Muallem told a top U.N. official in Damascus on Saturday, state media said.

The United Nations "must intervene to ensure (U.S. and EU sanctions) are lifted," Muallem said, according to state news agency SANA.