State commissioner to the military court Judge Saqr Saqr charged on Monday three Lebanese and six Syrians with smuggling weapons to Syria through al-Qaa border town.

The National News Agency reported that four out of the six Syrians were detained and one Lebanese remains at large.

At least 11 people were killed Monday as Syrian forces pressed their crackdown on dissent, pounding rebel bastions mainly in the restive north which also left many hurt, monitors said.

"Two civilians and five rebels were killed by gunfire and shrapnel in an offensive launched this morning in the village of Hass," Idlib province, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Senior Fatah commander Maj. Gen. Mounir Maqdah stressed on Monday that the trade of weapons in Lebanon flourished after the Syrian regime began cracking down on protestors in March last year.

“The trade of arms flourished after the events in Syria,” he said about the one-year-old uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime.

An international conference in Istanbul by "Friends of Syria" countries on Sunday urged the United Nations to act to stop the violence and recognized the opposition Syrian National Council as the "legitimate representative of all Syrians," but steered clear of backing opposition appeals for arms to fight the regime clampdown.

In a final declaration, the conference urged Syria mediator Kofi Annan "to determine a timeline for next steps, including a return to the U.N. Security Council, if the killing continues."

A deadline must be set for the Syrian regime to implement a peace plan by international envoy Kofi Annan, France's foreign minister said on Sunday.

"There is a risk of course of dragging out, and we can see the tactics of the regime that is to buy time," Alain Juppe told reporters on the sidelines of the second "Friends of Syria" conference in Istanbul.

Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime will not fall and attempts to overthrow it by force will aggravate the crisis in the region, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said on Sunday.

"It has been one year and the regime did not fall, and it will not fall, and why should it fall?" Maliki told a news conference in Baghdad.

Violence in Syria killed at least 72 people on Sunday, among them 15 members of the security forces who died in firefights across the country, activists said.

Security forces killed 57 people in several regions, including four children and three women, the Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said.

Damascus on Sunday blasted a "Friends of Syria" meeting in Istanbul that is seeking ways to up the pressure on President Bashar Assad's regime as a "platform for the enemies of Syria."

"Only the naive and those who want to see through the eyes of the Americans believe that this is a conference for the friends of the Syrian people," said Al-Baath newspaper, mouthpiece of Assad's ruling party of the same name.

Iran on Sunday backtracked on reports that five Iranian "engineers" abducted in Syria had been freed -- the second time in months it retracted news of their liberation.

Kazem Sajjadi, a foreign ministry official in charge of Iranians abroad, told state television that five Iranian pilgrims who had been kidnapped separately had been released, but that the five engineers remained captives.

The U.N. must act to stop the violence in Syria, a major conference heard Sunday as bloodshed on the ground claimed more lives.

The head of the Arab League Nabil al-Arabi called on participants of the "Friends of Syria" conference to "simultaneously call on the Security Council to take a binding decision ... to stop the violence in Syria."