U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will meet her British, French, Turkish and some Arab counterparts Wednesday to "discuss the situation in Syria," a Turkish diplomatic source said.

Britain's foreign minister, William Hague, France's Laurent Fabius, Turkey's Ahmet Davutoglu and several Arab ministers will be at the informal evening meeting in Istanbul on the 15-month-old crisis, the source said.

Russia and China strongly oppose foreign military intervention in Syria or Iran, said a joint statement released on Wednesday after Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Chinese leaders.

"Russia and China are decisively against attempts to regulate the Syrian crisis with outside military intervention, as well as imposing a policy of regime change, including within the Security Council," the statement said.

The Higher Islamic Shiite Council urged on Thursday the families of 11 pilgrims kidnapped in Syria to exercise self-restraint and remain calm.

Following a meeting held between the deputy head of the Council, Sheikh Abdul Amir Qabalan, and the families of the abductees, a statement urged Turkey to intensify its efforts to release the men.

Clashes broke out Wednesday between Syrian troops and residents of the border town of Arsal in eastern Lebanon after a Lebanese man was killed and two wounded at dawn along the Lebanese-Syrian border.

Security sources said that rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons were fired during the clashes at Kherbet Daoud, an area on the outskirts of Arsal.

Armed rebels went on the offensive in and around Damascus during the night, battling regime forces at an intelligence headquarters and at several checkpoints, a watchdog said on Wednesday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights had no immediate details of casualties from the latest clashes but its earlier figures show at least 168 soldiers killed in the past week, including 76 at the weekend, as the Syrian conflict becomes more bloody despite a U.N.-brokered ceasefire.

Ministers from some 30 countries, including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, will meet in Turkey on Thursday at an anti-terror forum overshadowed by Syria's crisis and Iran's nuclear threat.

The meeting comes as Western powers are pushing for increased pressure on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to stop his regime's assault against the population.

Contacts are ongoing with the different factions in Tripoli to maintain calm in the northern city and to halt any security violations by any side, al-Liwaa newspaper reported.

According to the daily, officials are continuing their efforts to preserve stability in Tripoli, urging Arab Democratic Party official Rifaat Eid, who leads the mainly Alawite neighborhood of Jabal Mohsen, and several leaders of the rival neighborhood of Bab al-Tabbaneh, not to slip over into new clashes.

The wives and daughters of Lebanese Shiite pilgrims kidnapped in northern Syria identified two of the kidnappers on Tuesday after seeing them in a report about the Free Syrian Army on television.

LBCI reported that several women, part of a group of pilgrims kidnapped in Syria and released without their male relatives, contacted it after seeing their kidnappers’ faces on a Monday broadcast.

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal said Tuesday that it is time for Russia to change its stance on Syria and work to ensure a peaceful transfer of power.

"The time has come for Russia to change its stance from supporting the Syrian regime to working to stop the killing and (supporting) a peaceful transition of power," Prince Saud told reporters after a Gulf Cooperation Council meeting in Jeddah.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on Russia and China Tuesday to be "part of the solution" to the crisis in Syria and warned that any hope for peace depended on a political transition.

"We believe there is a way forward and we are ready to pursue that. And we invite the Russians and the Chinese to be part of the solution," she said at a news conference in the Georgian Black Sea city.