Syrian opposition activists gathered in Berlin said Tuesday that it was too soon to form a transition post-Assad government after France said it would recognize a new provisional administration.

The opposition figures, meeting in the German capital to present a political roadmap after a possible ouster of President Bashar Assad, said it was premature to try to set up a new state.

The Mustaqbal parliamentary bloc noted on Tuesday that the facts released by the media over the case of former minister Michel Samaha and Syrian security chief Ali al-Mamlouk revealed the “extent of the Syrian regime’s involvement” in destabilizing Lebanon.

It said in a statement after its weekly meeting: “The revelations require the expulsion of Syrian Ambassador to Lebanon Ali Abdul Karim Ali because he had proven his involvement in covering up and participating in crimes in Lebanon.”

Seven Syrians, including two children, who tried to sail to Cyprus to escape the conflict in their homeland drowned after their boat sank earlier this month, a Turkish-Cypriot police source said Tuesday.

The source speaking in the breakaway Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), which is recognized only by Turkey, said the disaster took place on August 16 off the coast of northern Cyprus, near the Karpas peninsula.

The head of Russia's army said Tuesday that Moscow had no intention to end its military presence in Syria despite the escalating violence and threat of President Bashar Assad's fall.

"Why are you so worried about Syria?" Chief of Staff General Nikolai Makarov demanded in response to a question about reports that Russia was in the process of evacuating its Syrian naval base and pulling out senior military personnel.

Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour stated on Tuesday that the countries of the Non-Aligned Movement must tackle their own problems among each other instead of resorting to foreign powers that seek to impose their own will against them.

He stressed: “Can we possibly leave a member state, such as Syria, as prey to unjust sanctions that have been imposed for unconvincing reasons because of its insistence to maintain its sovereign, political, and economic rights ?”

A car bomb killed 12 people at a funeral in the mainly Druze and Christian suburb of Jaramana on the southeastern outskirts of the Syrian capital on Tuesday, state television reported.

"Another 48 people were wounded, many critically, in a terrorist car blast that targeted a funeral procession in Jaramana," it said.

The number of Syrians fleeing to the al-Zaatri refugee camp in Jordan has doubled in recent days, with more than 10,000 taking shelter there, the U.N. refugee agency said on Tuesday.

"The pace of arrivals from the Syrian border to the Zaatri camp in north Jordan has doubled in the past week," Melissa Flemming, a spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, told a press conference.

Vice President Farouq al-Shara said it would be a "mistake" to keep Iran out of international efforts to end the Syrian crisis, al-Watan newspaper reported on Tuesday.

"Some countries' refusal to engage with Iran on efforts to settle Syria's crisis on the pretext that Iran is part of the problem is a clear political mistake," it quoted Shara as saying.

A Syrian rocket landed on a farmhouse in a northeastern border region in Lebanon on Tuesday, injuring three Syrians, one of them seriously, the National News Agency reported.

NNA said the Syrians work in a farm that belongs to Tony Habib al-Toum in Masharih al-Qaa.

Syria's army pounded the eastern belt of Damascus before dawn on Tuesday after opening a new front east of the capital, a watchdog said, adding that 60 people were killed in the province the previous day.

The violence followed a bloody Monday in which 190 people -- 116 civilians, 40 rebels and 34 soldiers -- were killed across Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.