Pope Francis called for reconciliation and dialogue in Syria on Saturday as he led a mass vigil for peace in the war-torn country.

"In beloved Syria, in the Middle East, in all the world, let us pray for reconciliation and peace, let us work for reconciliation and peace," the pope said.

Sweden and Poland warned against knee-jerk reactions to the crisis in Syria on Saturday, saying that any international effort to solve it will require a commitment "for decades to come".

Speaking at a regional NATO conference in the Latvian capital, Riga, Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said the West was being short-sighted regarding the instability sweeping the Middle East.

The United States and France said Saturday that international backing was growing for military strikes to punish the Syrian regime for alleged chemical attacks, after European Union nations called for a "strong" response.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the number of countries ready to take military action was now in the "double digits", after earlier attending a meeting where EU foreign ministers united to call for action against Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime.

Attacks north of Baghdad, including a suicide bombing at a government building and the detonation of a booby-trapped corpse, killed four people Saturday, part of a months-long surge in violence.

The unrest has left more than 3,900 people dead already this year, and sparked concerns Iraq is slipping back into the all-out sectarian war that plagued it in 2006 and 2007 and left tens of thousands dead.

The leadership of Syria's ruling Baath party will go into "permanent session" starting Saturday, Syria state news agency SANA said, as Washington weighs military action against Damascus.

"The national leadership of the Arab Socialist Baath party discussed with other Syrian parties the latest developments in light of threats to launch an attack against Syria," SANA reported.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Saturday hailed as "invaluable" the united European Union position urging "a strong response" to a deadly chemical weapons attack blamed on Syria's regime.

"The signal given by a united European position in the face of this abominable conflict is of invaluable importance," her spokesman Steffen Seibert said in a statement.

Former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani rejected Saturday remarks attributed to him in which he allegedly criticized Tehran's chief regional ally, Syria, for using chemical weapons against civilians.

The rejection appeared on Rafsanjani's personal website after ultra-conservatives demanded the 79-year-old former two-time president clarify his stance on Syria.

The Italian coast guard said Saturday it had rescued more than 700 migrants and refugees, including many Syrians and Egyptians, from four struggling boats, the latest in a surge of refugee arrivals.

Coast guard and navy vessels rescued the migrants from troubled boats off the coast of Sicily on Friday and Saturday, rushing four of them -- a mother, father and their two young children -- to hospital for emergency care, the coast guard said.

Iraq has ordered Iranian exiles to move from a camp where 52 of their members were killed a week ago "without delay", a government official and the U.N. said Saturday.

Baghdad opened a probe into the events surrounding the deaths of the members of the People's Mujahedeen Organisation of Iran, which occurred on Sunday at Camp Ashraf in Diyala province, but accounts of the unrest still differ markedly.

The Gulf Cooperation Council urged the international community Saturday to intervene immediately to "rescue" the Syrian people from their government's "oppression."

"The genocide, and grave human rights violations, faced by the Syrian people necessitate an immediate intervention by the international community," GCC secretary general Abdullatif al-Zayani said.