Another Hizbullah fighter, Haidar Mahmoud Zeineddine, was killed in the fight lingering in Syria, and was laid to rest on Thursday in the southern city of Nabatieh, An-Nahar daily reported.

Hizbullah lamented Zeineddine and said that he was killed in the line of his”'Jihadist” duty.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat on Thursday launched a scathing attack on “the so-called international community” over its reluctance to support the Syrian people, but noted that “the prices that are being paid today by the Syrian people remain less costly than returning to the pre-revolution era.”

Criticizing remarks by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who on Wednesday urged the Syrian opposition to resist efforts by "extremists" to hijack the revolution, Jumblat said the U.S. official had overlooked the fact that “international reluctance to support the opposition … and acknowledge the Syrian National Council are the main two reasons behind the deterioration of the situation in Syria towards the current killing, destruction and sabotage.”

The unprecedented surge in air strikes carried out by Syrian forces this week is a desperate attempt by President Bashar Assad's regime to reverse recent gains by rebel fighters, analysts and rebels say.

The air raids, they say, are not so much aimed at hitting rebel positions but at striking enough fear and provoking enough anger to turn local populations against the opposition fighters in their midst.

China said Thursday it had made "constructive new suggestions" to end the bloodshed in Syria, including a phased region-by-region ceasefire and the formation of a transitional government.

In an apparent attempt to position China at the heart of efforts to solve the issue, the foreign ministry gave a detailed account of proposals it made to Lakhdar Brahimi, the visiting United Nations-Arab League joint peace envoy.

The head of the main opposition Syrian National Council on Thursday blamed the international community's failure to react to the country's conflict for fueling Islamic extremist sentiment.

The comments came a day after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the opposition should "strongly resist the efforts by the extremists to hijack the Syrian revolution".

Television journalist Fidaa Itani arrived in Beirut on Thursday night after he was set free by his abductors in Syria, his employer LBCI television reported.

Information Minister Walid al-Daouq and Information Ministry Director General Hassan Falha received Itani at the Rafik Hariri International Airport.

Syrian rebels killed 28 soldiers in attacks on three army checkpoints on the main road from Damascus to the embattled city of Aleppo Thursday, a watchdog said, as a warplane bombed the outskirts of the rebel-held town of Harasta, east of Damascus.

Five rebels were also killed in the attacks near the city of Saraqeb in Syria's northwest, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

A border clash between Lebanese security forces and a group of armed men crossing illegally into eastern Lebanon, left one dead, a security source and the National News Agency reported Thursday.

At 5:15 am a group of armed men drove their pick-up truck across the Syrian-Lebanese border near the town of Arsal in the eastern Bekaa valley, sparking a firefight, the official told Agence France Presse.

Lebanese journalist Fidaa Itani has arrived in Turkey after he was released by his abductors in Syria, Interior Minister Marwan Charbel announced on Wednesday from the Baabda palace.

Al-Jazeera also reported that “Journalist Fidaa Itani has been released by the Northern Storm Brigade in Syria.”

A motorcycle bomb attack on Wednesday near a Shiite Muslim shrine southeast of Damascus killed at least eight people and injured dozens, a watchdog said.

State television confirmed the blast, but said that six people had died and 13 were injured.