The majority of weapons secretly shipped to Syria at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar go to hardline Islamic rebel groups rather than more secular organizations favored by the West, The New York Times reported Monday.

Citing unnamed officials, the newspaper said this was the conclusion reached in classified reports presented to President Barack Obama and other senior officials.

An Armenian plane ordered to land in Turkey Monday for security checks while en route to Syria's battered second city of Aleppo was allowed to resume its flight Monday after nothing suspicious was found, Anatolia news agency said.

"We know a plane from Armenia was forced to land in (eastern) Erzurum city... but it was allowed to resume its journey," the state news agency quoted Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc as saying.

The European Union slapped fresh sanctions against President Bashar Assad's regime Monday, agreeing an assets freeze and travel ban on 28 Syrians and two firms at a meeting of EU foreign ministers.

This 19th round of sanctions since the start of the Syrian conflict in March last year brings to 181 the number of people and to 54 the number of companies blacklisted by the EU.

The number of Syrians fleeing the conflict in their homeland and seeking refuge in Turkey now exceeds 100,000, a Turkish disaster agency said on Monday.

Turkey is home to 100,363 refugees housed in several camps in the southeast along the Syrian border, the AFAD disaster agency said in a statement.

At least eight soldiers were killed in clashes with rebels at a military checkpoint near the battleground northern city of Aleppo, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Monday, as the Local Coordination Committees said regime forces killed 30 people across the country.

Aleppo, which has been the theater of intense conflict for the past three months, was rocked by a bomb at dawn while a string of rebel-held neighborhoods were bombarded by the army, the Britain-based watchdog said.

Turkey's Europe minister Monday called on Europe to do more to help his country tackle the more than 100,000 refugees fleeing the conflict in Syria, accusing the bloc of being fixated on its debt crisis.

In an interview with German daily Die Welt, Egemen Bagis said: "Europe should start thinking about the people who have fled Syria into Turkey."

U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi called Monday for a ceasefire in Syria during the upcoming four-day Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, as the revolt entered its 20th month with a death toll of more than 33,000.

Brahimi made his call as he shuttled between Syria's neighbors, which have been bitterly divided by the conflict along the confessional lines that have traditionally riven the Islamic world.

A spate of shootings and bombings targeting Iraqi security forces north of Baghdad killed at least six people and wounded several others on Monday, security and medical officials said.

Among the dead were three policemen and two anti-Qaida militiamen, after deadly bombings targeted Iraqi police the previous night, killing one policeman.

The Israeli parliament was to vote on Monday on a motion to dissolve itself and clear the way for a snap election, likely to be set for January 22, officials said.

At the session, which was to start at 14:00 GMT, MPs were expected to approve a government bill to dissolve the parliament, or Knesset, paving the way for early elections which were called last week by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

A Yemeni fighter jet crashed on takeoff on Monday on a routine training mission in the south, killing the pilot and wounding another crew member, the defense ministry said in a statement.

The aircraft, a MiG-21, crashed due to "technical failure," the statement said.