Jordanian anti-riot police were called in Monday to quell a protest by angry Syrians at a refugee camp after they clashed with guards when they tried to leave the facility, a security official said.

"Around 60 Syrians at the Zaatari refugee camp clashed with security guards when the group attempted to leave the camp and go back to the border town of Ramtha," the official told Agence France Presse, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Syria's top representative at the U.N. Human Rights Council said Monday he had defected because he no longer felt able in that position to do anything for the Syrian people.

"Basically, when I felt I could not help my people any more I had to move on," Danny al-Baaj, the first Syrian diplomat in Switzerland to abandon Bashar Assad's regime, told Agence France Presse.

A group of Syrian rebels said they captured the pilot of a warplane that the Free Syrian Army claimed to have downed Monday in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, as authorities said the fighter jet crashed due to technical problems.

A video distributed by the "Revolutionary Youth of the Land of the Euphrates" shows a man identified as pilot Mufid Mohammed Suleiman, surrounded by three armed men. "My mission was to bomb the town of Muhasen" in Deir Ezzor, said the man.

Phalange Party leader Amin Gemayel hailed on Monday the efforts exerted by Internal Security Chief Maj. Gen. Ashraf Rifi and head of the Information Branch Col. Wissam al-Hassan for averting a plot targeting Lebanon, warning against any attempt to politicize the investigations over the issue.

“It is a humanitarian achievement that saved the lives of innocent people,” Gemayel told reporters during a press conference at his residence in Bikfaya.

U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos announced Monday that she is to visit Syria and Lebanon amid growing concern for the "deteriorating humanitarian situation" caused by the Syrian conflict.

The visit, planned from August 14 to 16, "aims to draw attention to the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Syria and the impact of the conflict on people either remaining in Syria and who have fled to other countries, including Lebanon," the U.N. office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (OCHA) said in a statement.

Syrian forces bombarded rebel strongholds around Damascus Monday and rounded up residents in a massive raid in the heart of the capital as fighting raged in the second city of Aleppo, activists said.

Security forces raided houses and shops in the center of Damascus in the biggest operation of its kind in the city since the launch of the uprising against President Bashar Assad's regime in March last year, they said.

Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour stated that the government cannot take an “important fateful and political decision” based on media leaks, reported As Safir newspaper on Monday.

He told the newspaper: “The government will not take any decision regarding Syria before a clear judicial verdict is issued in former minister and MP Michel Samaha’s case.”

French military medics started on Sunday to set up a field hospital at Jordan's main camp for Syrian refugees, as residents expressed fear that their stay could turn into a long one.

Refugees gathered to watch 85 French medical officers assemble the hospital of 30 large khaki tents as well as 80 tons of medical equipment and aid supplies at the desert camp outside the city of Mafraq in northern Jordan.

The Syrian army pressed its assault on rebels in commercial capital Aleppo on Sunday, as both sides reported atrocities.

The exiled opposition said pro-government militia had executed 10 civilians in a roundup in the flashpoint central city of Homs, while the official SANA news agency reported the murder of one of its staff, in the latest case of a pro-government journalist being killed.

Residents of the northern Syrian city of Aazaz, "liberated" by the rebels three weeks ago, are already living a post Bashar Assad reality with a military and a political council running daily life.

"When the fighting ended, there was nothing. No water, no electricity, nothing to eat," Samir Hajj Omar, head of a new political council in Aazaz which is striving to organize for a post-Assad rule.