23 Syrian civilians were shot dead on Saturday as the regime held funerals on Saturday for 26 people killed in a Damascus suicide bombing that it called a "terrorist attack," promising an "iron fist" response to the second such incident in two weeks.

Local Coordination Committees announced that Syrian security forces shot dead 23 civilians including a child.

al-Jamaa al-Islamiyah MP Imad al-Hout slammed on Saturday those who are using sedition and sectarian rhetoric to create a rift between Lebanese.

“They will not succeed in their plan,” al-Hout said during a conference in Akkar.

A top Arab League official said on Saturday the group has no plans to withdraw its observers from Syria where they are charged with assessing whether the regime is keeping a deal to end the deadly violence.

"No plan to withdraw the observers is on the agenda of the Arab ministerial committee meeting on Syria" in the Egyptian capital on Sunday, the pan-Arab body's deputy secretary general, Adnan Issa, told Agence France Presse.

Iran, Syria's main ally, on Saturday condemned a deadly suicide bombing in Damascus that left at least 26 people dead.

Iran "strongly condemns the terrorist attack on Friday in Damascus and sympathizes with the victims' families," foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast was quoted as saying by the media.

The Lebanese government’s position from Defense Minister Fayez Ghosn’s statements that al-Qaida terrorist group had infiltrated the country may impact the Syrian regime’s position on its crisis should the issue become internationalized, reported the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat on Saturday.

Sources monitoring the crisis in Syria explained: “Should the Lebanese government adopt Ghosn’s claims, the Syrian regime would be able to portray its crisis before the international community as a dispute between terrorism and its desire to implement reform.”

President Michel Suleiman is intensifying his efforts to resume the national dialogue in order to tackle a defense strategy for Lebanon and implement the decisions that were reached on the Resistance and Palestinians’ possession of arms, reported the Kuwaiti al-Anbaa newspaper on Saturday.

His calls for dialogue have so far been ignored by the rival March 8 and 14 camps over each side’s preconditions to hold the talks, seeing as the former refuses to discuss the Resistance’s possession of weapons, while the latter insists that it should be the sole topic of discussion.

Special Envoy for the implementation of Security Council resolution 1559 Terje Roed-Larsen may propose during his upcoming visit to Lebanon with U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon deploying the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon along the border with Syria, reported the Kuwaiti al-Qabas newspaper on Saturday.

It explained that the Norwegian official considers such a move an attempt to further isolate the Syrian regime and limit the smuggling of arms across the Lebanese-Syrian border.

A high-ranking Syrian security official condemned on Friday Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat’s recent calls to introduce “radical change” in the Syrian regime, saying that the Druze leader has once again allied himself with former Premier Saad Hariri and Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea, reported the Kuwaiti Al-Seyassah newspaper on Friday.

The official said before a Lebanese Druze delegation: “When the time comes for settling scores, Jumblat will be dealt with in the same manner as Hariri and Geagea, as well as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffery Feltman.”

The Damascus-based chief of Hamas was instrumental in getting Syria to accept an Arab observer mission into the country, the head of the Arab League said on Friday.

Nabil al-Arabi was speaking in Cairo after talks with Khaled Meshaal, the exiled head of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.

The United States condemned Friday's deadly suicide bombing which left at least 26 people dead in Damascus, the capital of violence-wracked Syria.

"We categorically condemn this attack," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters.