The Syrian army has been using starvation as a "weapon of war" in its siege of the Yarmuk Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of Damascus, Amnesty International said Monday.

In a report on the plight of Palestinian and Syrian civilians in Yarmuk, the rights watchdog said nearly 200 people have died since an army siege was tightened in July 2013 and access to food and medicine cut.

A group of nuns abducted from the Syrian town of Maalula in December were released on Sunday evening and handed over to a Lebanese General Security delegation in the outskirts of the Bekaa border town of Arsal.

"The Maalula nuns have been freed and they are now in our custody," General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim told LBCI television.

Syria's seat at the Arab League will remain vacant until the opposition completes the formation of its institutions, the pan-Arab group's secretary general Nabil al-Arabi said on Sunday.

"The last Arab summit in Doha in March 2012 adopted the principle of granting Syria's seat within the League to the opposition, but it has not yet established its institutions and must take further steps in this regard," Arabi said after a meeting of the Arab Ministerial Council.

Two thousand demonstrators gathered on the Greek island of Crete on Sunday to protest against the planned destruction of Syria's chemical weapons in the eastern Mediterranean, an Agence France Presse reporter said.

Despite pouring rain at the port of Souda, crowds brandishing black flags demanded more information about the international operation.

A number of rockets fired from the Syrian side of the border landed in the northern region of Akkar, reported the National News Agency on Sunday.

The rockets, fired at dawn, landed in the towns located near the Kabir, or Grand, River near the Lebanese-Syrian border.

A Beirut-based satellite television channel said that one of its cameramen was killed on Saturday while covering the fighting in eastern Syria.

Omar Abdel Qader, who was killed in Deir Ezzor, worked for the privately owned Al-Mayadeen station which supports the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

An Internal Security Forces Unit exchanged fir on Tuesday with suspects during a raid in the Taamir Ain el-Hilweh area in the southern city of Sidon.

The state-run National News Agency reported that the raided the area in search for wanted suspects.

Syrian forces captured Saturday a rebel-held town near a famed Crusader castle in the strategic province of Homs, after nearly a month of fighting, the army said.

"Syrian army units, in cooperation with the National Defense Force and honorable residents, took full control of the town of Zara and its surroundings in the western Homs countryside," a statement said.

Rockets hit on Saturday a town in the Bekaa a day after the Qaida-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant claimed an attack on nearby areas.

The state-run National News Agency reported that two rockets fired the eastern mountain range landed near Hermel public hospital.

Syria was removing its chemical arsenal at "an increased pace" with almost a third of its stockpile having been taken out of the war-torn country, the world's chemical watchdog said on Friday.

But Damascus remained behind schedule as yet another target date loomed next week, ahead of a June 30 deadline to hand over or destroy its arsenal, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said in The Hague.