Syrian authorities confirmed on Saturday that forces detained a Lebanese boat smuggling boxes from northern Lebanon into the territorial waters off the Syrian village of Kherabh.

According to SANA, Lebanese gunmen opened fire at the boat while Syrian authorities were allegedly trying to inquire the members about the cargo on the boat.

Opposition Syrian National Council leaders on Saturday pressed the Arab League to turn the Syria crisis over to the U.N., but the League looked set to extend its own mission criticized for its failure to stem 10 months of killing.

SNC chief Burhan Ghaliun met Arab League head Nabil al-Arabi in Cairo and lobbied against the extension of the League's peace mission, SNC spokeswoman Basma Qadmani said.

Qatar, which has called for Arab troop’s to deploy in crisis-hit Syria, is a "tool" being used by the United States against Damascus, state newspaper Ath-Thawra newspaper reported on Saturday.

The claim was made as Arab League foreign ministers are to meet in Cairo on review of an observer mission critics who say it has been unable to stem the violence in Syria. League officials have voiced satisfaction with the mission's progress so far.

A roadside bomb killed 15 detainees being transported in a Syrian prison truck in Idlib province in the northwest on Saturday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

"15 prisoners were killed in the explosion which targeted a prison truck on the road between Idlib town and the village of Mastumeh," the Britain-based group's chairman, Rami Abdul Rahman, told Agence France Presse by telephone.

A 16-year-old Lebanese boy was shot and fatally wounded after gunmen opened fire on a fishing boat on the maritime border with Syria on Saturday, his father and a local official told Agence France Presse.

"My wife crossed the border into Syria and has seen his body in the morgue of Bassel Assad hospital" in the coastal city of Tartus, said Ahmad Hamad of his son Maher.

Speaker Nabih Berri stressed on Friday the importance of Lebanon exploiting its petroleum wealth, saying that the oil will bring the country economic comfort.

He added before members of the Editors Syndicate: “The state appointments and formation of the petroleum regulatory authority should be a priority for the government.”

Syrian security forces on Friday killed 13 people across the country, activists said, as pressure mounted on the Arab League to seek U.N. intervention in the face of growing frustration that the bloc's hard-won observer mission in Syria has failed to staunch 10 months of killing.

Meanwhile, thousands of people poured out of mosques after Friday prayers to call for the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad's regime, after choosing "Prisoners of the Revolution" as the slogan for this week's main protests.

President Nicolas Sarkozy declared Friday that France cannot stand silently by and allow Syrian leader Bashar Assad to put down the pro-democracy revolt in his country.

"We cannot accept the ferocious repression by the Syrian leadership of its people, a repression that has led the entire country into chaos, and a chaos that will help extremists of all kinds," he said.

The decision of Premier Najib Miqati’s government to remain neutral on the Syrian crisis is the best formula to preserve stability in Lebanon, a U.S. diplomatic source said Friday.

“The government has resorted to the policy of neutrality towards the Syrian crisis to achieve stability … which we admit it’s the best recipe to preserve stability,” the source told pan-Arab daily al-Hayat.

NATO is not planning or even "thinking" of intervening in Syria, the alliance's most senior officer said Thursday, days after a top Russian official said such plans were in the making.

"There is no planning and we are not thinking about an intervention," General Knud Bartels, head of NATO's Military Committee, told a news conference after a two-day meeting of the alliance's military chiefs.