Al-Joumhouria newspaper published on Monday the transcript of confessions of the informer in the case of ex-Minister Michel Samaha.

According to the daily the informer headed to the Internal Security Forces Intelligence Branch in July, saying that he has obtained “very dangerous information he would like to make.”

A rebel Free Syrian Army group claimed it had shot down an army helicopter in Damascus on Monday and that the pilot had been killed, a spokesman said.

"It was in revenge for the Daraya massacre," Omar al-Qabooni, a spokesman for the Badr Battalion in Damascus told Agence France Presse via Skype, referring to the reported killing of at least 320 people in a town southwest of Damascus during a five-day government offensive.

At least 14 more bodies have been found in the town of Daraya near Damascus after activists reported a gruesome "massacre" there in a five-day assault by regime forces, a watchdog said on Monday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights had reported on Sunday the discovery of 320 bodies in Daraya after what opposition militants said was a brutal onslaught of shelling, summary executions and house-to-house raids by government troops.

Interior Minister Marwan Charbel expressed optimism on Monday that the release of one of the 11 Lebanese pilgrims kidnapped in Syria would set the stage for setting free more abductees this week.

In remarks to As Safir daily, he hoped that a new batch of abductees would be released in the coming days.

Egypt on Sunday defended its idea of forming a regional contact group on Syria which would include Iran, a staunch Damascus ally, insisting that Tehran could "be part of the solution" to the Syrian crisis.

President Mohammed Morsi proposed at this month's Organization of Islamic Cooperation summit in Mecca creating such a group made up of Egypt and Iran, as well as Saudi Arabia and Turkey, two countries supporting the rebels fighting President Bashar Assad's regime.

Syrian President Bashar Assad said on Sunday the foreign "conspiracy" against his country would be defeated, as his forces were accused of a bloody rampage in a town near Damascus that left hundreds dead.

"The Syrian people will not allow this conspiracy to achieve its objectives" and will defeat it "at any price," Assad said during a meeting in Damascus with a top official from Iran, Syria's chief regional ally.

Britain expressed grave concern on Sunday at reports that several hundred bodies have been found in a town near Damascus following a fierce assault by the Syrian army.

"I am deeply concerned by emerging reports of a brutal massacre of civilians in Daraya, in the outskirts of Damascus," said junior foreign minister Alistair Burt.

Syrian Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi and Foreign Minister Walid Muallem will attend the August 30-31 Non-Aligned summit in Tehran, a top Iranian official announced in Damascus on Sunday.

Aladin Borujerdi, the head of the Iranian parliament's foreign policy committee, on a visit to Damascus, said that Syrian President Bashar Assad informed him at a meeting that Halqi and Muallem would attend the NAM summit.

President Bashar Assad said on Sunday that Syria would defeat what he described as a foreign plot being waged against the country, according to the official SANA news agency.

"The Syrian people will not allow this conspiracy to achieve its objectives" and will defeat it "at any price," Assad said.

A veteran Japanese war reporter killed while covering the anti-regime movement in Syria suffered nine bullet wounds with the fatal injury sustained in the neck, police said Sunday after an autopsy.

Mika Yamamoto is believed to have come under fire on Monday from pro-government troops in Aleppo, Syria's second city, which has borne the brunt of fighting in the country over the past month.