A rights watchdog reported on Sunday that 50,009 people have been killed in Syria since the uprising against President Bashar Assad began in March 2011.

The United Nations estimates that upwards of 60,000 have been killed.

Fighting erupted Sunday between Syrian troops and rebels around a train station in Damascus, as regime warplanes pounded insurgent positions to the east of the capital, a watchdog said.

The clashes broke out in the Port Said area and spread to the nearby Qadam train terminal, while the army shelled the Qadam district itself and neighboring Assali, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

A U.N. Security Council delegation on Sunday began a brief visit to Yemen in a clear boost to President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi aimed at helping to iron out problems hampering national reconciliation talks.

The delegation, which includes the head and members of the top body as well as United Nations special envoy Jamal Benomar, went straight into a meeting with Hadi, state television said.

A regime warplane killed 16 people, half of them children, in a strike on the city of Manbij in the northern province of Aleppo on Saturday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The strike came as the watchdog reported seven people killed in air raids on the Aleppo city of al-Bab, and that similar strikes hit Aazaz, only seven kilometers (four miles) south of neighboring Turkey, where a Patriot missile battery went operational on Saturday.

Egypt's national defense council headed by President Mohamed Morsi on Saturday appealed for calm and called for a national dialogue as deadly clashes raged.

In a statement read out on state television by Information Minister Salah Abdel Maqsud, the council called for dialogue with "independent national figures" to settle political differences and agree on a mechanism for an upcoming parliamentary election.

Russia, one of the Syrian regime's last supporters, continues to supply weapons to Damascus under contracts signed long ago, Syria's deputy prime minister said on Saturday.

"Syria has always received and today is still receiving (weapons from Russia). We have agreements signed before the conflict and Russia is fulfilling its obligations," Qadri Jamil told Moscow Echo radio.

Around 200 Palestinians demonstrating in solidarity with prisoners held by Israel hurled stones at troops in the West Bank on Saturday and soldiers responded with tear gas, Palestinian security officials and the Israeli military said.

Palestinians said the confrontation erupted when protesters tried to set up tents adjacent to Israel's West Bank security fence at Anin village, near the northern town of Jenin.

The humanitarian group Medecins Sans Frontieres appealed Saturday for better access to those wounded in the conflict in Syria, notably in the second city of Aleppo.

"Growing insecurity around Aleppo undermines efforts to provide essential medical care," said MSF, or Doctors Without Borders.

Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali said on Saturday that lengthy consultations on a Tunisian government reshuffle had failed and that he will choose a new line-up unless a compromise is found soon.

"We did not agree on a government reshuffle but the negotiations were positive," said Jebali, whose Islamist Ennahda party heads a coalition government with the secular parties Ettakatol and Congress for the Republic.

A suicide bomber who killed 42 people at a funeral in a Shiite mosque this week had escaped from prison in an al-Qaida jail break in September, a provincial politician claimed on Saturday.

The attacker, who struck on Wednesday in Tuz Khurmatu, north of Baghdad, also wounded 75 people in the deadliest single attack in Iraq since July 23.