Various March 14 student and youth organizations held a rally on Wednesday in front of the Foreign Ministry headquarters in the Ashrafiyeh district in Beirut to demand the expulsion of Syrian Ambassador to Lebanon Ali Abdul Karim Ali.

The organizers said the demo was staged to “protest the security chaos and demand the release of the abductees and detainees in Syrian prisons and the expulsion of Syrian Ambassador Ali Abdul Karim Ali.”

Some 20 non-violent Syrian opposition parties and movements said in a meeting in Damascus on Tuesday that they seek to establish a democratic regime without resorting to arms.

"We are faced with two sides that use violence, but weapons only lead to attrition," said Raja Nassar, who coordinated the gathering.

Syrian opposition activists gathered in Berlin said Tuesday that it was too soon to form a transition post-Assad government after France said it would recognize a new provisional administration.

The opposition figures, meeting in the German capital to present a political roadmap after a possible ouster of President Bashar Assad, said it was premature to try to set up a new state.

The Mustaqbal parliamentary bloc noted on Tuesday that the facts released by the media over the case of former minister Michel Samaha and Syrian security chief Ali al-Mamlouk revealed the “extent of the Syrian regime’s involvement” in destabilizing Lebanon.

It said in a statement after its weekly meeting: “The revelations require the expulsion of Syrian Ambassador to Lebanon Ali Abdul Karim Ali because he had proven his involvement in covering up and participating in crimes in Lebanon.”

Seven Syrians, including two children, who tried to sail to Cyprus to escape the conflict in their homeland drowned after their boat sank earlier this month, a Turkish-Cypriot police source said Tuesday.

The source speaking in the breakaway Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), which is recognized only by Turkey, said the disaster took place on August 16 off the coast of northern Cyprus, near the Karpas peninsula.

The head of Russia's army said Tuesday that Moscow had no intention to end its military presence in Syria despite the escalating violence and threat of President Bashar Assad's fall.

"Why are you so worried about Syria?" Chief of Staff General Nikolai Makarov demanded in response to a question about reports that Russia was in the process of evacuating its Syrian naval base and pulling out senior military personnel.

Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour stated on Tuesday that the countries of the Non-Aligned Movement must tackle their own problems among each other instead of resorting to foreign powers that seek to impose their own will against them.

He stressed: “Can we possibly leave a member state, such as Syria, as prey to unjust sanctions that have been imposed for unconvincing reasons because of its insistence to maintain its sovereign, political, and economic rights ?”

A car bomb killed 12 people at a funeral in the mainly Druze and Christian suburb of Jaramana on the southeastern outskirts of the Syrian capital on Tuesday, state television reported.

"Another 48 people were wounded, many critically, in a terrorist car blast that targeted a funeral procession in Jaramana," it said.

The number of Syrians fleeing to the al-Zaatri refugee camp in Jordan has doubled in recent days, with more than 10,000 taking shelter there, the U.N. refugee agency said on Tuesday.

"The pace of arrivals from the Syrian border to the Zaatri camp in north Jordan has doubled in the past week," Melissa Flemming, a spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, told a press conference.

Vice President Farouq al-Shara said it would be a "mistake" to keep Iran out of international efforts to end the Syrian crisis, al-Watan newspaper reported on Tuesday.

"Some countries' refusal to engage with Iran on efforts to settle Syria's crisis on the pretext that Iran is part of the problem is a clear political mistake," it quoted Shara as saying.