Iraq's cabinet on Tuesday decided to provide humanitarian aid to war-torn Syria and launch a relief campaign via the Iraqi Red Crescent, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in a statement.

The cabinet decided "to provide humanitarian aid and begin a popular campaign of humanitarian relief for the brotherly people of Syria, via the Iraqi Red Crescent," Dabbagh said, without providing further details.

U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday that the Syrian civil war is a "calamity" that now threatens world peace and demands action by the divided U.N. Security Council.

Ban told the opening of the U.N. General Assembly that the Syria conflict "is a regional calamity with global ramifications" that needs action by the Security Council.

The Damascus regime said its forces recaptured a strategic district of Aleppo city, a claim rejected by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights which gave an nationwide toll of 85 people killed nationwide on Tuesday.

At least three children were also killed in the country, including a six-year-old killed by soldiers who opened fire on the car she was in on the motorway linking Aleppo to Damascus, the Britain-based watchdog said.

Five Syrians were released on Tuesday after being detained in Rashaya al-Fakhar on Monday.

The National News Agency reported that party and political efforts were exerted to reach a settlement to ensure their release.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem and his deputy Faisal al-Moqdad arrived on Tuesday at Beirut international airport.

The two officials arrived at the airport on board a private jet before heading to New York on board a regular flight through a layover in Germany.

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi will travel to Turkey on Sunday for discussions expected to focus on the conflict in Syria, state media reported.

Morsi's visit will be his first to Turkey since he became Egypt's first democratically elected civilian president in June.

A top Islamist lawyer said on Tuesday the nephew of slain Al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was among six jihadists arrested in Jordan last week as they tried to cross into Syria.

"Jordanian border guards on Saturday arrested six mujahedeen, including Abu Asyad, the nephew of Zarqawi, as they attempted to go to Syria for jihad," Musa Abdullat, a leading lawyer for Islamist groups, told AFP.

The army confiscated a pick-up truck loaded with arms with a Lebanese man and six Syrians, who entered the country illegally, aboard in the border region of al-Qaa in the northern Bekaa.

According to a communique issued by the army command, the army seized the pick-up truck on Monday night.

A Lebanese man who has been held hostage in Syria along with ten other pilgrims since May was released on Tuesday, media reports said.

Awad Ibrahim told LBCI TV network that he was in good health.

A Syrian rebel commander, Colonel Kassem Saadeddine, has escaped an assassination attempt by pro-regime forces unscathed, a spokesman for the Free Syrian Army (FSA) told Agence France Presse on Tuesday.

"Colonel Saadeddine's convoy was ambushed by shabiha (pro-regime militiamen) after midnight in Salmiyeh in Hama province" in central Syria, Fahd al-Masri told AFP.