Syria's army, locked in a fierce battle for control of Aleppo, pounded rebel-held areas of the commercial capital on Thursday, rights activists reported.

An intense bombardment rocked the neighborhoods of Hanano, Saif al-Dawla, Shaar and Shakur from 3:00 am (0000 GMT), according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

A group of 160 Syrians travelling in a fishing boat arrived in the southern Italian port of Crotone on Wednesday, the Italian ANSA news agency said.

The group from the conflict-torn country was made up mainly of families and included 76 men, 36 women and 48 children.

A man was killed and several people were wounded in a Syria-related clash between residents from two villages in northern Lebanon on Wednesday, officials told Agence France Presse.

"A man was killed and several injured when men from Sunni-majority Akroum village clashed with the majority Shiite village of Hourani," a security official said on condition of anonymity.

A Russian general Wednesday denied reports he had been killed by rebels in Syria during an operation against President Bashar Assad's top security men.

General Vladimir Kuzheyev told reporters at a hastily arranged press conference at the Russian defense ministry in Moscow that he was flattered by the attention and happy to report he was well.

A Turkish lawyer who defended suspected al-Qaida militants has been killed in fighting in the Syrian city of Aleppo, Turkey's Anatolia news agency said Wednesday.

Osman Karahan, who represented several suspects accused of carrying out four truck bomb blasts in Istanbul in November 2003, was buried Tuesday after being killed in the heavy combat gripping the key northern city, his brother Ekrem Karahan told Anatolia.

A dozen countries are to attend a hastily called meeting in Tehran on Thursday to discuss ways to end the violence in Syria, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said, without saying who was coming.

"The consultative meeting on Syria will be held tomorrow in Tehran with 12 to 13 countries from Asia, Africa and Latin America" represented, Salehi said on Wednesday, the official news agency IRNA reported.

France on Wednesday confirmed the U.N. Security Council will hold a ministerial meeting on the Syria conflict on August 30 focused on the humanitarian situation in the country and its neighbors.

"Despite the divisions that have prevailed in recent months, the Security Council cannot remain silent about the tragedy being played out in Syria," French foreign ministry deputy spokesman Vincent Floreani said.

Kuwaiti lawmakers on Wednesday warned the government of the Gulf state against taking part in a meeting in Iran over the Syrian crisis, accusing Tehran of aiding the Damascus regime.

"Kuwait's participation in Tehran meeting is rejected because Iran hands are stained with the blood of the Syrian people," opposition Islamist MP Walid al-Tabatabai said in a statement.

Syria said its troops seized a rebel-held Aleppo district on Wednesday after storming it and "annihilating" most of the insurgents, as a long-threatened ground assault on the key city was launched.

The rebels promptly denied the claim, acknowledging that a "barbaric and savage attack" on the neighborhood of Salaheddin was under way but later saying they had recaptured much of what they lost.

Two of the relatives of the 11 Lebanese pilgrims kidnapped in Syria on Wednesday managed to visit the abductees in the Aleppo town of Aazaz along with an LBCI TV crew.

Ali Zgheib’s son Adham and Awad Ibrahim’s brother Hussein appeared in the highly emotional video broadcast by LBCI, as tears and appeals dominated the scene.