Ammar al-Dadikhi, aka Abou Ibrahim, the infamous abductor of the Lebanese pilgrims in Syria's Aazaz, has been killed during an attempt to storm a town in Aleppo's countryside, the Beirut-based, pan-Arab television al-Mayadeen reported on Monday.

“Kurdish popular committees killed Abou Ibrahim and four members of his group as they were trying to storm the town of Qastal Jindo in Aleppo's countryside,” al-Mayadeen said.

Explosions shook Syria's capital on Monday as warplanes launched their heaviest air raids yet and two car bombs struck, with the U.N.-Arab League peace envoy saying the conflict was going from bad to worse.

The air raid blasts, heard coming from several outlying districts, rattled windows in the city center and were among the most intense in Damascus since the beginning of Syria's 19-month conflict, an Agence France Presse correspondent said.

The Kurdish rebel sits fiddling with his Kalashnikov looking bored when a comrade suddenly breaks into screams of "Allahu akbar" as a series of explosions reverberate from the front line.

"Take it easy, take it easy, he can't hear you," says the Kurd, sitting next to a pile of broken glass on the street, his jeans rolled up to reveal knock-off black plimsolls with the word "PRADA" written on the label.

The crisis cell announced on Monday that abducted journalist in Syria Fidaa Itani will be released soon, revealing also that there are positive signals and indications concerning the issue of the nine detained pilgrims.

Labor Minister Salim Jreissati explained after the meeting of the governmental committee in charge of following up on the Lebanese kidnapped in Syria at the Interior Minister Marwan Charbel's office that sources have disclosed that “Itani's abduction is strictly related to the material he was covering”.

A car bomb attack killed at least 10 people in the predominantly Christian and Druze area of Jaramana near Damascus on Monday, Syrian state television said.

"A terrorist car bombing next to a bakery on Rawda Street killed at least 10 people, including women and children," the television said.

Syria's conflict is going from bad to worse, the U.N.-Arab League peace envoy said Monday after key talks in Moscow on finding a solution, expressing disappointment that his four-day truce plan had failed.

"I have said and it bears repeating again and again that the Syrian crisis is very very dangerous, the situation is bad and getting worse," envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said after talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

The Syrian military on Monday launched the heaviest air strikes seen in the country since warplanes were first deployed over the summer, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

"There have been 48 air raids across the country over four hours this morning. These are the heaviest air strikes since warplanes were first deployed over the summer," the watchdog's director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Monday voiced bitter frustration at the failure of the Syria ceasefire and stressed the need for international unity to end the violence.

"I am deeply disappointed that the parties failed to respect the call to suspend fighting," Ban said in the South Korean capital Seoul, where he received a peace prize from his home country.

Turkish artillery struck back on Monday after a shell fired from neighboring Syria ploughed into Turkish territory without causing any casualties, the state-run news agency reported.

The shell struck near the village of Besaslan in southern Hatay province amid escalating clashes between Syrian loyalist troops and rebels in the Syrian town of Haram, just across the border, Anatolia said.

The international highway linking northern Lebanon to Syria was reopened on Monday after residents blocked it to protest the arrest of Samer Ahmed al-Nuaimi by Syrian authorities, the National News Agency reported.

The residents of Tal Andeh town in Akkar erected on Sunday a tent to press the Lebanese authorities to exert more efforts to release al-Nuaimi.